Government is ‘ignoring’ pension problem

THE Government has been accused of ignoring credible suggestions given to it by the trade union movement to solve Ireland’s pensions crisis.

SIPTU’s biennial delegate conference was told yesterday the Government was delaying the publication of a paper which would highlight the extent of the problem.

“The main challenges are how and when are we going to raise the State pension to a level sufficient to protect all elderly people from poverty, how and when are we going to ensure a reasonable proportion of the workforce have access to appropriate pension arrangements and how are we going to ensure the pension arrangements we already have are going to adequately protected not just against inflation and rising costs but also against employers who are trying to close down schemes and avoid their responsibilities,” said SIPTU equality officer Rosheen Callender.

She said the Government had failed to answer the call to action to solve those problems.

“We are pretty sure that when the Green Paper on pensions is published it will highlight the need for action in those areas,” she said, adding there was frustration that the Green Paper still remained unpublished as the new Social and Family Affairs Minister Martin Cullen was still studying it.

Ms Callender said the recommendations of the National Pensions Review in 2005 were one of the many resolutions put forward to resolve the pensions crisis that had not been acted upon. It recommended that tax incentives be equalised so lower paid workers would have as much as an incentive as higher rate tax payers to make pension contributions.

“The situation is going to leave people more dependent on the State in the future because in the end if people do not have decent pensions they will be relying not only on the State contributory pension but the non-contributory pension,” she said.