A national pensions policy is far from being the most popular dinner table topic but there is no getting around its importance for our future wellbeing.

With growing longevity, about half the workforce not in a pension scheme, and a State pension that is not sustainable at current levels, failing to create a supplementary pension plan bought into by the majority of the population is a grim prospect.

Insurance Ireland, the sector lobby, held a workshop on the topic earlier this week and launched a report based on international best practice. Among authors was David Harris, a former Australian civil servant now living in the UK.

He recalled the current pensions system in Australia was introduced in the early 1990s in a deep recession, with 80 per cent of the population against a Government policy that would require them to put money aside when finances were already under huge pressure.

According to Harris, phasing the measure in, starting with small contributions and then growing them, was key, as was the decision to create individual accounts so that people could see their personal investments. The latter characteristic helped work against the notion that this was another tax.

When the Australian economy started to take off, courtesy of a minerals boom, a lot of wage negotiations led to increases in the contributions going into people’s pension accounts. An effect of this was that it helped dampen inflation.

The measure is now hugely popular and is looked upon by Australians as one of the better public policy decisions of recent times. Among the visible benefits are huge infrastructural developments, such as harbours and roads, which are owned by the enormous sectional pension funds that have been created.

The question for our Government is whether it will start the implementation of such a system during its remaining period in office, or whether it will be left to 2016’s election manifestos. We shall see.