Minister Humphreys in Dail debate on AE Bill said:
On the State top-up, the type of financial incentive to support participation in the AE system has been the subject of extensive and detailed consideration in the development of the design of the AE system. In short, the Government is of the view that all contributions to automatic enrolment should be incentivised equally. We thought seriously about applying normal tax relief, but lower- and middle-income earners would lose out with that approach. In fact, anyone who is not paying tax would receive no State support whatsoever and that would be unfair. We went through this at length over many hours. We deliberated on it and the officials and I felt this was the best and fairest system. Accordingly, the Government decided on the recommendation I brought forward, which was to instead provide a top-up to participants' contributions at a rate of €1 for every €3 contributed by an employee. That is the equivalent of a 25% tax relief across the board. This is a unique feature of automatic enrolment and it is designed with those to whom it will apply in mind. While some may claim that a person who pays income tax at 40% will lose out under AE, that would only be the case if they had a viable and equal alternative available to them that included all of the attributes of AE, such as mandatory employer support.