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Joan Burton said she believed auto-enrolment would be a more viable option for the country, despite a recent OECD report on the Irish pension system branding auto-enrolment a more costly and second-rate policy. The Labour TD admitted that any such reform would need to go hand in hand with an emphasis on security of individual savings, as the recent use of assets from the National Pensions Reserve Fund to prop up the country's ailing banking sector would "probably loom quite large in people's minds".
Burton also said the economic circumstances to make an auto-enrolment system viable were probably "still a little bit of time away." "Nonetheless", she added, "it is important that, as a government, we formulate a response on this critical issue where we have seen other countries we would regard as markers for Ireland successfully introduce initiatives to address the question of supplementary pensions."
The minister strongly indicated that the launch of auto-enrolment would see a reduction of current tax burdens to balance out the increased cost of second-pillar pension saving, saying there was a possibility for the "recasting" of the current universal social charge structure to support both the state pension and private provisions.
Security and cost was an issue repeatedly touched on by the minister, who said an auto-enrolment system would need to offer "secure identification of whatever savings someone put in to a supplementary pension".
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