I always sympathize with these questions. Having moved to Ireland myself I know first-hand the frustrations associated with trying to find a cost-effective pension solution.
To start with PRSAs are among the most highly regulated pension products in Ireland and are subject to a number of provisions designed to improve consumer protection but which in practice can result in some bizarre consequences.
For example, we recently debated with a PRSA provider their decision to report in the Statement of Reasonable Projection (SORP) the highest cost fund as the assumed cost of a portfolio for projections in order to comply with the pension regulations.
What this means in practice is that if a portfolio holds a number of funds with fees ranging from 0.15% to say 1%pa with an average of say 0.30% the PRSA provider reports to the investor that the fund management charge for their pension is 1% (the highest fee) rather than the actual cost of the portfolio. When we pointed out that we are able to provide an individual portfolio cost for each investor we were told that the PRSA provider's systems could not cope with this. So remember that when you receive your Statement of "Reasonable" Projection.
PRSA providers operate a form of cartel pricing with the most competitive products now costing 0.5%pa including having an Independent Custodian. I wrote a piece in the
Sunday Business Post when Custom House Capital blew up stressing the importance of having your pension trustee separate from your custodian.
Then you need to consider the differences between using Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Mutual Funds
When you buy an ETF you
must use a broker to execute. You are going to have to pay a dealing charge each time you buy and sell and a bid offer spread and if you don't buy a Euro share class, you are going to have to pay a Foreign Exchange fee as well.
FX is still unregulated so you can end up paying as much as 4% to change your currencies on your "low-cost" execution platform.
Also, if your broker charges a minimum fee for each trade (as many do) then these are going to add up substantially for a small pension with regular contributions as you will hit the minimum fee each time you add to the pension.
I also think you are being extremely optimistic on your estimate of charges - a bond ETF might cost 0.15% but you would be unlikely to be able to build a decent balanced portfolio at that cost in Europe.
The alternative is going to be to use Mutual Funds.
The more sophisticated platforms don't charge for dealing in Mutual Funds irrespective of the size of the transaction so this can result in substantial cost savings over time.
However, you also need to watch the share classes that you are being offered and be aware that some fund managers will not be available to retail investors or will impose very high minimum investments. For example the minimum investment into the Vanguard Institutional Plus Fund range is €200 Million per fund.
Many fund managers now prefer to deal with a small number of institutional investors rather than a large number of retail investors and price their funds accordingly.
Hope that helps