perhaps CF's proposal could've been interrogated a little.
I also realised that to do the proposal justice would require much more time to get the average, fairly disinterested listener up to speed.
I agree 100%. That's what I've been asking since I first presented my proposal. In 2021, I presented to the Pensions Council but it decided that "
it wouldn't be feasible to complete a feasibility study". Then, after I won the award from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in 2022, I tried again, but this time the Pensions Council managed to "lose" my proposal between meetings, without any explanation for its disappearance.
In 2023, I finally managed, through hard lobbying, to persuade Minister Humphreys to ask the Pensions Council again for an independent evaluation. An official’s letter to me, dated 28 April 2023, read:
."...Minister Humphreys has recently referred your proposal to the Pensions Council for an independent external evaluation of the issues involved. ..."
Her letter to the chair of the Pensions Council of two days previously read slightly differently:
".... I would appreciate if the Pensions Council would analyse this proposal and provide me with its assessments covering the following:
...... (five headings, not one of which was value for money or stability of returns)
..... In view of the fact that I hope to bring the AE legislation to the Houses in advance of the summer recess … I would appreciate it if this could be given priority in the Council's work. Both Tim Duggan and Clare Dowling are available to the Council to discuss this further if required."
To cut to the chase, the Minister asked at end April for
"an independent external evaluation of the issues involved" (but not of the most important issues, mind you) so that she "
could bring legislation to the Houses in advance of the summer recess". What sort of independent evaluation did she expect in that timeframe? Does that look like a genuine attempt to really understand my proposal?
From the very start, when I presented my first paper to the Society of Actuaries in Ireland in January 2021, all I've been asking for is a genuinely thorough, genuinely independent evaluation of my proposal by a quality outfit, one with the necessary strengths in economics and behavioural psychology, such as the ESRI. I'm still asking for that, over three years later. I may eventually get it.