Published on Monday22ndApril2013
OECD Review of the Irish Pensions System published – Burton
Minister Burton speaking at the launch of the review today
Social Protection Minister Joan Burton, together with John Martin, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Director for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, today launched the OECD Review of the Irish Pension System.
In April last year the OECD was engaged to conduct a focussed review of Ireland’s pension policy, taking economic conditions into consideration, and provide recommendations for long-term reform. The review, published today, encompasses the totality of pension provision in Ireland: State, private, occupational and public sector.
Some of the findings of the review included:
■Ireland is facing challenges on the financial sustainability of the pension system as the population ages; despite large projected increases in expenditure over the next 50 years, however, Ireland’s pension spending will still be comparatively low in international comparison.
■The economic situation of pensioners in Ireland is comparatively good, both with respect to other age groups in the population and in international comparison. Ireland and New Zealand are the only OECD countries which do not have a mandatory earnings-related pillar to complement the State pension at basic level; as a result, Ireland, like New Zealand, faces the challenge of filling the retirement savings gap to reach adequate levels of pension replacement rates to ward off pensioner poverty.
■Private pension coverage, both in occupational and personal pensions, is uneven and needs to be increased urgently.
Read the full press release
here.#
Read the review
here.