Pension system - It’s time to make proper provisions

With the Government due to publish a Green Paper on Pensions in the coming weeks, the Think Tank for Action (TASC) on social change warned that if the Government is serious about ensuring that pensions should eliminate poverty in retirement, it must address the public pension system as a matter of urgency.

Expenditure on the comprehensive state pension system is around 2.5% of gross national product (GNP), which is low by international standards, and it has been falling for more than a decade.

This has been in a time of unprecedented prosperity, when the Government should be providing for the future.

There is an urgent need for action on the allocation of funding for public pensions, especially in view of dramatic demographic change resulting from the unprecedented migration into this country in recent years. This was not anticipated, so there should be proper pension planning on which society should not scrimp.

Pensions are almost inevitably going to cost more in future and the TASC report suggests the money should be provided by increasing the proportion of GNP devoted to state pensions, reducing the subsidies to private sector pensions, and promoting a flexible employment policy to enable people to work beyond 65, if they wish.

Every society has an obligation to protect its most vulnerable, and that category clearly includes pensioners. Proper provisions should be made now.