Our present personal debt hell is putting our future at risk

MICHAEL Noonan is reconsidering an idea that he and other ministers rejected last October: people with money built up in a pension fund, but which they can’t access until they reach retirement age, should be allowed to take some of the money prematurely if it can be used to pay down debts that they cannot repay otherwise.

But the Finance Minister does not seem to keen on the idea. People have to be persuaded to save to provide for themselves in the future rather than expecting the State to do it then. An aging population means that the numbers who will be claiming from the State in the future will be enormous; it will be an extraordinary drain on the taxpayers of the future, given that pensions are paid out of a government’s current revenues. No point in adding to that number by allowing people to run their private future pension pots now.

However, the State has done exactly what it will not allow its citizens to do. One of the good things that Charlie McCreevy did in government was to establish the National Pension Reserve Fund, with the idea of creating a pool of money to pay pensions from 2020 onwards when the needs would become much greater than they are presently. Unfortunately, much of that money has been diverted from good investments into the banks and the fund’s value is a fraction now of what it was once. However, it did allow the State do what it felt was required to prop up the banks. Why should people be stopped from propping up their own financial positions with their savings?