Yes, but at least you have the choice to move your savings elsewhere if you don't like the deposit interest/DIRT structure. You could pay down your mortgage (effectively earning 4-5% gross if you're on a variable rate), buy and hold shares (concentrating on ones which favour capital growth over dividends), you could invest in property, anything you like really - knowing that if the tax structure changes, you can make a new choice. But once your money is locked away in a pension, you are 100% at the mercy of whatever tax changes the government wants to make - increased levy, exit taxes, reduced or removed tax free amounts, reduced contributory pension because you were kind enough to provide for yourself...
So you can't make a fully informed choice today - the current tax implications might make the pension look better today but by the time you can access your money, tax changes along the way may have made your choice a very poor one.