There has been much talk of an incipient pensions crisis as various bodies set out their stalls during national pensions awareness week. Quite how bad the situation is depends on to whom you care to listen.
The Pensions Board, which is charged by the Government with promoting private and occupational pension coverage, spoke of steady progress being made. The number of workers with private or occupational pension cover is growing and awareness of the issue among the young is also on the rise. Some 50,000 workers have taken out Personal Retirement Savings Accounts (PRSAs), the portable personal pensions introduced last year.
The Government, in the person of the Minister for Social Welfare, Séamus Brennan, chose instead to highlight the distance between where we are now and where we want to be. He honed in on the fact that 900,000 out of the two million people at work do not have a private or occupational pension to boost their incomes in retirement. The situation is worse amongs female workers with only one third of women working outside the public service having pensions. All those without pensions will have to rely on the contributory and non-contributory State pensions, which as the Irish Congress of Trade Unions pointed out, are worth around 30 per cent of average industrial earnings.
While opinions differ about the scale of the problem, all sides seem to agree that there is sufficient time to put in place a pension system appropriate for a state with Ireland's wealth. But it is clear that this goal will be met only by adopting a strategy that departs radically from the current approach, which relies on generous tax relief to encourage voluntary saving.
Tax relief on its own has not proved a sufficient incentive for the young or the low paid to fund their own pensions. Initiatives to simplify pension saving and lower costs - such as the introduction of PRSAs - have helped but are not going to be enough.
Mr Brennan gave some indication this week of the sort of measures the Government may pursue, following a statutory review of the pensions strategy due to be completed by the Pensions Board this summer.
The most radical is the introduction of compulsory pensions with employers and employees required to contribute, along with the State. Other proposals include offering people incentives to work beyond the current retirement age and the introduction of hybrid savings and pensions products to capitalise on the culture of saving engendered by Special Savings Incentive Accounts.
As with any radical measure these steps will have powerful advocates and opponents. Business, for example, is unlikely to welcome compulsory pensions. And it remains to be seen whether the prospect of a crisis some 20 years down the road is sufficient incentive for the Government to take up the challenge with real action at this juncture.