I move:
That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Pensions Act 1990 to provide for an appeals mechanism where a pension scheme is being wound up by the trustees of that scheme.
Recent events have demonstrated that there is a serious deficiency in Irish pensions law, which means that a solvent company can walk away from its responsibilities having run down its pension fund. In other words, it can close down the fund and leave accumulated liabilities to the detriment of members. This situation has been resolved in the United Kingdom for the past 20 years. Unfortunately, the UK legislation is running into some difficulties so we do not propose to repeat that here. We must take a more nuanced approach in our Bill, which we have done. It will meet many of the objections raised to the British legislation or to a proposal along the lines we are suggesting. I will outline the details of that when the Bill is being discussed on Second Stage.
In addition, the method of calculation of liabilities for defined benefit pension purposes grossly inflates liabilities. We are obliging the Pensions Authority to do a study of how liabilities are calculated and to report back to this House within six months.
In addition to this, a pension protection scheme has been in operation in the UK for more than 20 years. I do not know whether a similar arrangement would be appropriate here but we are asking the Pensions Authority to report to us on this within six months. I refer to where the trustees of a defined benefit pension scheme make an application to the Pensions Authority under section 50 to change the terms of the scheme. We have had many complaints that in some cases a particular group of members, whether deferred pensioners, future pensioners, etc., might be more adversely affected than others and they have no redress. We would provide an appeal mechanism to the Pensions Authority in such a situation, provided the majority of the members of the scheme who vote in a particular ballot to deal with the situation propose to do so. I will recommend the Bill to the House during Private Members' time next week.
