The end of the road

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Colm Fagan

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It was with a deep sense of sadness I learned this morning that Ireland's auto-enrolment Bill was passed into law last night. So all my efforts to show that there's a far better way to do AE than to treat it as a collection of individual DC pension arrangements have been in vain.
I gave it my best shot. It wasn't enough.
To all who've supported me for the last six years, I'm sorry. I'm thinking particularly of Brian Woods, who has been my intellectual rock for the last 50 years. Brian had his doubts initially, but I think I finally managed to convince him!
 
A win for the pensions industry who can't even tell customers exactly what they are charging them.

However you really advanced the thinking on this issue - as soon as I heard what you were proposing I was convinced.

I would not be surprised to see another country adopt your idea the future.
 
You can lead a horse.........
Thanks Colm. At least you educated a lot of us.
 
I am sorry to hear that your proposal was rejected by the government.

I would have thought that it was an absolute no-brainer that we should want to keep the administrative costs of running auto-enrolment to a minimum.

I can't help but think that in ten years time, someone is going to look at the scheme we've went with and will start asking the question as to why it's costing so much.

What's unforgivable is that there seems to have been no one in the chamber to debate this. Auto-enrolment is incredibly important to the long-term strategic future of planning for our retirement. What are the busy-bodies in Leinster House doing that's more important than this?
 

Pearse Doherty and Clare Kirrane (the SF Social Welfare spokesperson) were probably busily canvassing for Sinn Fein north of the border.
Presumably, from their perspective it's far more important that Northern Ireland elects as many absentee MPs to Westminster as possible!

And, after all, why should they care about some 800,000 voters having a sub-optimal pension scheme imposed on them?
 
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Hi Colm

You fought a great fight and you can hold your head up high.

You won a prestigious prize for your efforts and maybe some other country will adopt it.

It's very difficult to get civil servants and politicians and committees to change their minds. But those civil servants, politicians and committees move on and, maybe, in a few years, someone will dust down your submission and implement it.

Brendan
 
TheJackal said:
‘Historic’ pension Bill passes with only Minister for Social Protection and Ceann Comhairle in Dáil chamber
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I'm not an expert on parliamentary procedures but I understand that there was no opportunity for debate last night.
Michael McDowell argued strongly for my proposal in the Seanad on 19 June - https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2024-06-19/15/ - and previously on 28 May. Richard Bruton and Catherine Connolly also spoke favourably in the Dail (18 April, I think). For obvious reasons, Richard Bruton had to be circumspect in his comments, but it was clear that he agreed that it's stupid to treat AE the same as a standard DC scheme, which is what the Bill proposes.
 
Raskolnikov said:
I would have thought that it was an absolute no-brainer that we should want to keep the administrative costs of running auto-enrolment to a minimum.
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I agree of course, but without wanting to get into the weeds of my proposal, investing in "real" assets for the entire duration, pre and post retirement, is a bigger contributor to doubling the pension than lower expenses.
 
Colm Fagan said:
I agree of course, but without wanting to get into the weeds of my proposal, investing in "real" assets for the entire duration, pre and post retirement, is a bigger contributor to doubling the pension than lower expenses.
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Even just doing away with the notion of "safe" bonds being the correct investment for near retirement and post retirement would be a big help
 
This was Get Brexit Done. Michael McDowell made a very good case that there should be a pause to evaluate Colm's proposal which had already been endorsed by the independent expert appointed by the Pensions Council. But all other contributors, including the Minister, argued that we should Get This Done. Short termism at its worst. A big gong for the Minister facing a GE. The reckoning will outlive the political careers of our legislators.
 
Today's Irish Times picked up on the absence of any of our elected representatives while this significant piece of legislation was being nodded through.

the report goes on to inform us that

... the legislation was dealt with in 15 minutes, ending at 8.10pm when all TDs entered the Dáil chamber for the weekly votes.​

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So all of those TDs would have been close to the Dáil chamber while the legislation was passing through. (No prizes for guessing where many of them probably were!)


‘Historic’ pension Bill passes with only Minister for Social Protection and Ceann Comhairle in Dáil chamber

Seán Ó Fearghaíl says he is disappointed at level of attendance as fundamentally important auto-enrolment pension legislation approved
www.irishtimes.com
 
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Fortune said:
Even just doing away with the notion of "safe" bonds being the correct investment for near retirement and post retirement would be a big help
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Especially when bonds are anything but safe, the reason why many people have a hole in their pensions now is because of overexposure to bonds. Prior to 2020 bonds were outperming but only because of the perverse era of negative interest rates, a historical anomaly
 
I suspect, and I have yet to have a look into it, that all the supposed benefits of investing in bonds only happen with direct investment, rather than in a pooled managed fund.
 
Fortune said:
I suspect, and I have yet to have a look into it, that all the supposed benefits of investing in bonds only happen with direct investment, rather than in a pooled managed fund.
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I think the biggest beneficiary is the seller of bonds not the buyer, negative interest rates were invented to keep money flowing into government coffers globally, it kept interest rates low and increased the value of older issue bonds, it was great until interest rates finally had to go back up because of inflation which finally sparked off. Maybe alot if the reason was that the great deflationary force China was in lockdown and all those cheap manufactured goods from China were drying up.
 
If I buy a bond, I get the annual coupon payments and then return of the oar value at the end. Any external events (other than default) done affect those payments.

In a bond fund, my value is affected daily by interest rate changes etc. It doesn't sound safe to me at all.
 
The people we elect to represent us, have proven consistent, if nothing else....
 
All is not completely lost, TCS will have a lot of road to travel implementing AE before it's live at scale.
 
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