Choosing Your Future: How to Reform Ireland's Pension System

Edited by Jim Stewart and Gerard Hughes, and following on from Jim Stewart's For Richer, For Poorer, published in 2005, Choosing Your Future compares to public and private pension systems in Ireland, looking at the demographics involved, the performance of each and the proposed schemes to deal with the shortfall.

With an ageing population and the coverage rate for occupational pension schemes falling, Ireland is facing a crisis of pensioner poverty in the next few decades. Examining the trends in pension administration and uptake over the last number of years, the authors note a transfer of responsibility from employer to employee with the shift from defined benefit to defined responsibility schemes. It is shown that tax reliefs on private pensions largely benefit the better off, and possible alternatives are investigated, leading to a recommendation for a tax credit at the standard rate of tax for private pensions. It is also proposed to expand and reform the public pension scheme, which is better equipped to adapt to demographic changes.

Table of contents:

• Chapter 1 Introduction and Summary - Jim Stewart and Gerard Hughes
• Chapter 2 Demographics: What is Known and What is Unknown? - Peter Connell
• Chapter 3 Delivering Pensions: The Performance of Public and Private Providers and the National Pensions Review - Gerard Hughes
• Chapter 4 The Proposed Special Savings for Retirement Scheme: Some Issues and International Comparisons - Jim Stewart
• Chapter 5 Public Social Security Pensions and Private Mandatory Pensions: Mutually Exclusive or Mutually Supportive? - Anthony McCashin
• Afterword A Business Journalist's Perspective on Pension Issues - Kathleen Barrington