I think the days of ISA are gone we have a good tax break in place for Contributing over your working life to fund your retirement ,
You bring up two points here, and I would like to address both of them.
Firstly I am not talking about SSIA where the government 'topped up' the money deposited into the savings accounts. I am talking of an ISA scheme, similar to the UK where a capped amount of money goes into the fund net of tax and the funds grow in the fund tax free - so no DIRT, Exit Tax or CGT. This would be the perfect type of vehicle for the couple like this who wish to be financially sensible and plan for their future kids education, as well as someone saving a deposit for a house or wish to have a cushion to fall back on if something happens.
Its all well and good saying there are decent tax breaks for those investing in pensions - but a large cohort of people are not willing to put away money for that length of time. People need to have reasonable cushions before thinking of pension plans and this is part of the whole issue with it. The tax breaks for pensions are too generous - the 2 million limit is simply too high to impact most people. It needs to be reduced to 1 million, and any savings outside of that for retirement needs to be part of personal savings options complementing pensions.
However, to offset this there should be an alternative vehicle put in place that allows people to save and grow their savings tax free (to a limit - even say 250 euro a month) and allows them access it when they need to - say child's education, house purchase deposit or whatever.
I have no doubt that the next bump in the road is less than 3 years away - and I have no doubt there are a large chunk of people currently living pay cheque to pay cheque with little to no savings. These are not necessarily the low incomes, but also chucks of middle income as well. I firmly believe an ISA type structure would encourage a portion of those to put some funds away for the rainy day - long before pension age kicks in.
The problem is we have lots of people coming to Ireland who will be working on or below the average industrial wage ,
these are the people who will need to be looked after and a system put in place to ensure they will be able to retire when they reach pension age,or hit health Issues
I will ignore the element of "people coming into Ireland" and focus on the low income element of your statement. Absolutely, we have a pension time bomb going off, but not only for lower income groups. Lots of middle income groups are in the same category with little to know pension pot in place. This was no different to the couple in the programme - the reasons their financial independence age was so high was because their pension pot was so under funded. 33% of private sector workers have a private pension and the average pension payout is less than 6k per annum (journal source so taken with a pinch of salt). A pension of this size is simply a top-up on the state pension, not a replacement for it. I would be amazed if the retirement age was not raised to 70 by the time I am due to retire (I am 43). The question is how many will be in a position to work, and be able to get a job at 70 !!!
I believe the entire system needs an overhaul, and compulsory pensions need to be introduced across the board. I also think the amounts needs to be increased from 6% by both to 15% from employers and 10% from employees, with the employee permitted to add additional AVC's of 10%. But 35% should be the limit, regardless of age or pension type, and full alignment should be done across all pension types (PRSA, Occupational, Executive etc). There should be no reason for having different types of pensions - they are all just a savings account for retirement.
I also believe that all defined benefit pensions in the private sector should be closed down, turned into defined contribution and the employer should be 35% of the salary per year into the fund. There are too many underfunded pension pots, and these need to be separated and properly funded. The company should not be permitted to pay dividends until the pension transfer is adequately funded.
The public sector pensions are another matter - personally I would like to see minimum of 25% of the public sector salaries paid into the National Pension Reserve Fund which is constitutionally protected from raiding so the pension entitlements of current employees are adequately funded for, and not simply a liability on our children. I think we have put enough of debt on them to date.
https://www.independent.ie/business...on-do-not-know-how-to-start-one-35456462.html
https://www.thejournal.ie/pension-cover-ireland-2565427-Jan2016/