Many media outlets, economic commentators and politicians use the terms Public Service and Public Sector as if they are interchangeable. - they are not. The ESB for instance is part of the public sector but is not part of the public service.
The Civil Service is a sub set of the Public Service and the Public Service is a sub set of the Public Sector.
My question is: what is proposed for the commercial semi state sector? I suggest a compulsory pension contribution to top up their DB funds and if they are projected to be adequately funded the excess could go to other distressed DB schemes in the Public and Private Sectors. (Such as Waterford Glass etc)
As far as I know the pension levy applies only to the Public Service and not to the part of the Public Sector that is commercial semistate companies like ESB, CIE, etc.
These companies have their own funded (not paid for out of government expenditure) db schemes. Some of these schemes are well funded while others are in defecit.
What happens when one of these companies goes bust? In Irish Shipping and more recently with Irish Fertilisers the pensions got consideradibly less than they were expecting.
I suggested here that the levy should apply to the semi state db's and that in the event of one scheme being overfunded the excess could help another under funded one.
Actually, as the prospect of the pensions levy being applied to the semi-states could be yet another landmine waiting to go off in the government's face.
I'm in the semi-state sector and have been repeatedly told by my union that the levy does NOT apply as we fund our own pensions and only come out on 20% of final salary (in the civil service it's 50%, I think) just like the private sector. However, we haven't been told this by the revenue commissioners, who are the people who count.
As far as I'm aware (and I'm open to correction) the levy isn't to fund civil service pensions, it's being presented as a kind of insurance fee, a charge for the government guarantee of the civil service pension.
Since our pensions are also guaranteed by the government (notwithstanding that they have never actually put any money in, except as the employer contribution) it could be argued that we also are subject to the levy.