Opposition to Brennan's SSIA pension plans

Minister for Social and Family Affairs Seamus Brennan is facing strong opposition over plans to roll-out a pensions package for the national savings scheme.

According to a report in this morning's Sunday Business Post, officials from the Department of Finance are opposed to extending the Special Savings Incentive Accounts (SSIAs) because they say the existing scheme is overly-generous.

They argue that there is no legislation in place to facilitate new pensions products to replace the first batch of SSIAs which start maturing next June.

Just half of the population have a pension and many of these are under-funded.