Colm Fagan will be on Pat Kenny Newstalk at 11 am this morning.

Well done Colm.

I had not heard the analogy before.

Colm said the current proposal is like having lots of people who want to commute from Howth to Dun Laoghaire all going in separate boats with all the risks that entails. It would be better to have a large ferry which makes the journey in half the time at half the cost and with less risk.

Brendan
 
While waiting for the podcast, you can listen back to the whole show using the link below. The piece starts at 2h04m40s

The Pat Kenny Show

Pat Kenny brings his experienced broadcasting style and incisive analysis to the day's news and current affairs now at the new time of 9am. The show mixes strong current affairs analysis, human interest interviews with light entertainment stories and live music. Sharp, intelligent and insightful...
www.goloudplayer.com www.goloudplayer.com
 
As a listener, I thought the proposal was presented on PK as nothing but good and 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 had a listen to this just now. Obviously, Pat Kenny was very supportive of Colm's proposal.

Personally, I did struggle with a couple of points, as follows:

[3.35] Colm says "No one is forcing them into the ferry - they can always get into the dingy if they want"

[8.35] Pat say "Everybody's money rolled into one big pot and invested in a selection of high, medium and low risk" and this is greeted with an "Exactly" from Colm

I think that the combined effect of these two sections would leave most people rightly confused as they are not consistent with Colm's actual proposals as I understand them.
 
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rob oyle said:
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.
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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.
 
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@JimmyB99 I’m not sure I understand your difficulty.
The first point is that people aren’t being forced to join the AE scheme: they can do their own thing if they want.
The second - completely separate - point is that everyone who joins the AE scheme participates in the same fund. They all get exactly the same return. Pat did misunderstand the investment strategy for the fund, with his reference to high, medium and low risk. He obviously believes in the value of active management, that investment managers can decide which asset class is likely to outperform at a particular time. I don’t, however I made an on the spot decision that, if I corrected him, we could disappear down an irrelevant rabbit hole (for the purposes of our discussion) so I left it be.
 
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Colm Fagan said:
I don’t, however I made an on the spot decision that, if I corrected him, we could disappear down an irrelevant rabbit hole (for the purposes of our discussion) so I left it be.
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Hi Colm.

Agree with your decision not to correct him. I have corrected minor details on air before and ended up confusing everyone.

If you had said "Well actually I am proposing a 100% equity strategy" he would have come back with "But that is high risk" and you would have had to go back to basics.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
That confused me. But if they join the AE scheme, the only investment offered would be your scheme, Colm?
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That's exactly the point, Brendan. I listened to the podcast with my wife and she wondered would there be two simultaneous schemes! [Otherwise - people in their own dinghy - are foregoing the mandatory employer contribution. It's not accurate to say if they don't like my ferry, they can always hop into their own dinghy - especially without explaining the implications of this. Why not say it as it is - why not be up-front and say that the cost of flexibility/personal investment choice is too high and that these proposals are predicated on it being "all aboard" for the substantially greater good?!]

Regarding the high, medium & low investments - this was actually mentioned twice. Again, my wife asked "wouldn't you be better off being investing much more in equities?!"

I fully accept that messaging on air is tricky. All I'm saying is that if you didn't understand how Colm's proposals were intended to work before this interview, my guess is that you wouldn't really understand them after it. My wife is miles smarter than me and she was confused. Similarly, it's pretty clear that Pat Kenny didn't really understand the concept - does anyone disagree with me here? Even Richard Bruton - his contribution to the Dail debate, taken as a whole - would leave me to strongly suspect that he doesn't understand the subject well.
 
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@JimmyB99 @Brendan Burgess
I really don't know what's causing confusion in relation to my comment about people "doing their own thing". I accept it gets more complicated if people prefer not to join the AE scheme, but it's no skin off the employer's nose to accommodate them by contributing the same amount to a private pension.
As far as people not understanding my proposal is concerned, I've been inundated with comments, likes, etc. by people saying that what I said was crystal clear. Can't win 'em all, I suppose.
BTW, The dinghies supplied under the Bill will be spanking new, I'm assured. None will be dingy :):):)
 
Colm

You absolutely made a good presentation of a very complicated proposal. You correctly avoided going down rabbit holes.

It was not a presentation to the Oireachtas Committee or the Society of Actuaries where you would have been right to correct and clarify people's misunderstandings.

Brendan
 
Those are fair points, Brendan. That said, Colm has his high-level opponents and the selective verbatim quoting of what was actually said could now be used to discredit.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Colm

You absolutely made a good presentation of a very complicated proposal. You correctly avoided going down rabbit holes.

It was not a presentation to the Oireachtas Committee or the Society of Actuaries where you would have been right to correct and clarify people's misunderstandings.

Brendan
Click to expand...
I agree, for your regular PK listener, the take-away point was that Colm's pension ferry is better than a (dingy) pension dinghy.
 
@nest egg - Thanks for posting the link to the podcast.

I think Colm's idea is extremely interesting and he is to be applauded for it. Regarding the interview itself, I think as @nest egg said, the high-level take away for the ordinary listener may well will be that these proposals sound good.

However, I do agree with @Brendan Burgess and @JimmyB99 regarding the confusion caused by the comment that members have other choices if they don't join the AE scheme. There was really no need to say this. Also, there are many reasons why I just don't like this line (happy to elaborate on this later, if required)
Colm Fagan said:
......but it's no skin off the employer's nose to accommodate them by contributing the same amount to a private pension.
Click to expand...

Regarding the asset allocation issue, I can't help from feeling that this is a bit of a pity. A key driver of the uplift in Colm's proposals is the continuous undiluted equity exposure. If you don't have equity exposure to this extent, you don't get the corresponding upside. It's absolutely central to the proposals and it's pretty much impossible to have a reasonable understanding of the proposals without understanding this.

Obviously Brendan has much more media experience than most of us so it is informative to read his comments in this regard. Nonetheless, I think it's a pity that the essence of the proposal was denied. I prefer to tell things simply but straight and agree with a former patent office clerk who told us that......everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler!
 
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