Government aims for 70% pension cover

TOTAL pension cover across the public and private sectors is almost 51% of the workforce aged between 20 and 69.

This current state of the Irish pensions market will serve as a benchmark for the state's drive to get 70% of those at work into occupation and personal pension cover over the next 20 years.

Those who qualify for state pensions are excluded from the findings that were published yesterday by the Central Statistics Office in its Quarterly National Household Survey.

Of the 50.7% with pensions, 35.2% had occupational pensions only, 12.6% had their own pensions, while 2.9% who were found to have both types of cover.

Anne Maher, chief executive, the Pensions Board said the findings were probably slightly lower than the previous estimates for such cover, but pointed out that the number of people at work has risen dramatically since the last estimate by the government review body.

Some of the key findings:

Catering and agricultural employees have the lowest occupational pension cover.

On a regional breakdown, Dublin has 55.8% of workers covered by pensions.

In the West of Ireland that figure falls to 41.5% and 43.8% for the Midlands which had the lowest rates of cover 44% of those classified as self employed had personal pension plans

Just 40% of those in the private sector have pensions against the vast majority in the public sector.

Workers in catering and agriculture have cover levels of 12.5% and 15.8% respectively.

Pension cover varies with age, gender and marital status which showed younger workers tend to have less cover with just 24.4% in the 20-24 age bracket in pension plans.

That contrasts with 60.5% for workers aged between 35-44 which is the highest incidence of cover.

Men come out better than women in the survey also with 55.4% coverage compared to 44.2% for women.

The survey also found that single workers are less likely to have pensions with a coverage rate of under 40% compared with 60.2% for married workers.

Welcoming the report, Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Coughlan said: "one of my key objectives is to see the level of pension coverage increase to 70% of those at work over the age of 30."

To ensure that objective is reached the government has put in place "the Personal Retirement Savings Account to make it easier for people to take out pensions and I expect to see this have an effect from 2003."

She expressed concern that only 44.2% of women in the workforce have pensions against 55.4% for women.

That issue will be addressed in the National Pensions Awareness Campaign to be launched in the months ahead, she said.

In the case of Additional Voluntary Contributions roughly 1 in 9 workers or 11.5% have AVC's as part of their occupational pension cover. Older members of schemes were bigger users of AVC's the survey found.

In the case of those aged between 20-24 just 4.3% have such plans against 15.9% in the 55-69 age category.

Again, in the case of the gender breakdown, more males (13%), than females (9.4%), have invested in AVC's to enhance their retirement plans.