Workers should be forced to pay into their pensions
OECD TELLS IRELAND
Report also says “healthy” employers should not be allowed to walk away from pension liabilities
Public servants should move away from the current final salary pension scheme and all private sector workers should be forced to invest in private pensions under recommendations in a report on pension provision in Ireland.
In the most radical review of the Irish pension system to date, the OECD says the “simplest, less costly, and most effective way to increase coverage” is through the introduction of mandatory pension savings.
It also suggests that “healthy” employers should not be allowed to walk away from pension liabilities. Several high profile private sector employers have recently announced plans to abandon final salary schemes, imposing cuts in benefit of up to 50 per cent on workers.
The report, commissioned by Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton, examined all elements of the Irish pension system – the provision of state pensions and occupational schemes in both the private and public sector, as well as personal private pensions. It also set those provisions in an international context among OECD members.
It was charged with assessing the sustainability of the current system in the light of changing demographics and more volatile financial markets, adequacy of individuals’ provision for income in retirement, equity within the system among different groups and the modernity of the Irish pensions structure.
“We hope there is enough political will and and that people are far-sighted enough to recognise that we have to make some difficult choices, said John Martin, director of employment, labour and social affairs at the OECD. “We have talked enough about it at this stage.”
While the report that costing the various measures it proposes was beyond the scope of the current review, Mr Martin said it should take the Government no more than a year to calculate the cost once it decides which approach to adopt in addressing the crisis of future pension adequacy.
The OECD finds fundamental weaknesses in all elements of Irish pensions.
The State pension is complex and inequitable, it argues and should be replaced either with a universal basic state pension, regardless of contributions through PRSI through the working life, or by a means tested pension.
Steps should also be taken to encourage people to work longer, possibly by offering a higher state pension for those who do not tap into it until they are older.
However, ultimately, the OECD says Ireland needs to move to a position where fewer people rely solely on the State pension, partly because it is likely to become unaffordable for the State in its current form.
Addressing this requires an “urgent” increase in private pension coverage – either through occupational or personal schemes – it says, and notes that, among the OECD’s 34 members, only Ireland and New Zealand do not have mandatory, earnings-related savings for retirement, although New Zealand does have an auto-enrolment system, which allows for opt outs.
It also calls for a change in the “unequal treatment” of public and private sector workers, due largely to the prevalence of defined benefit, or final salary, schemes in the public sector compared to defined contribution schemes, where the employee carries the full investment risk, in the private sector.
While welcoming the recent changes in public sector pensions, the report says they are being introduced “only very slowly” and are unlikely to affect most public sector workers for a long time.
It also proposes that any new mandatory or auto enrolment scheme introduced for the private sector, which would be a defined contribution model, should also be extended to public servants.
It suggests that recent reforms and any new scheme should be not just for new entrants but also for existing public sector workers below a set cut-off age.
BOSTON BOMBER WAS HIDING A FEW FEET AWAY FROM IRISHMAN’S HOME
The young Irishman living next door to the house where Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (middle of pic above) was found hiding in a boat has said “he could have killed my family”.
A picture of the father of the two men.
Tsarnaev, 19, is believed to have been hiding in the boat in Watertown for hours before he was noticed.
Donegal man Brendan Toye was in lockdown next door with his wife and young son.
Brendan from Carrigart said: “We were sitting in our house thinking we were safe watching all this on television. We didn’t know he was just a few feet away hiding in the boat.
“He was armed and he could easily have jumped over the fence. I don’t like to think about it but he could have killed us all.”
The first Brendan knew that the bomber was next door on Franklin Street was when armed police officers knocked on his door just after 6pm on Friday.
The officer grabbed the couple’s six-month-old son Garbhan and told the couple to follow them.
“He said he presumed we knew they were looking for the bomber and they thought they had him cornered next door.
“I was frightened but my wife Lori was terrified. It was all very surreal.
“We grabbed our coats and we were out the door in seconds,” said Brendan.
They ran down the street and took shelter in a house down the road.
Minutes later Brendan said he could hear rapid gunfire followed by a series of up to four controlled explosions.
Seconds later there was a huge round of applause as locals realised the bomber had been caught.
“I think they were using by house to shoot at the suspect in the boat.
“It’s the perfect spot as it looks right across to the boat where he was hiding — you can almost touch it,” said carpenter Brendan who moved to America from Donegal 12 years ago.
“It’s just one of those things but I am very conscious that three people were killed and a lot more badly injured by this atrocity.
“Watertown is a quiet area and we only moved into this house in January. I have been doing the house up and we’re very happy here.
“This could have happened anywhere but it was just unfortunate that it was next door to us.”
New EU-Irish agreement on mortgage rights directive ready
Agreement has been reached between the Irish presidency, the European Parliament and the European Commission on the new Mortgage Credit Directive.
The deal will bring closer a new EU wide set of standards for mortgage consumers as well as for banks and credit institutions.
The European Commission has hailed the agreement as heralding greater protection and transparency for consumers.
It added that tougher credit worthiness assessments across the EU would lower the risk of housing booms and busts.
There will be measures against misleading advertising, as well as rules to prevent lenders taking excessive risk in providing mortgages in order to secure bonuses or commission.
Staff in credit institutions will have to meet performance standards so that potential borrowers will be fully aware of their rights and obligations at the pre-contractual stage.
Borrowers will be guaranteed a period of reflection, or period of withdrawal, before being bound by a contract.
Banks and credit institutions will also have to show “reasonable forbearance” when dealing with borrowers who are experiencing serious difficulty in making repayments.
These principles will, however, only apply to mortgages issued after the directive comes into force, which is expected to be in the middle of 2015.
NOONAN WELCOMES AGREEMENT
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan welcomed the agreement.
“We have seen in Ireland how practices in relation to mortgage credit have contributed to the crisis in the financial system. The new rules agreed today will give consumers much better information about mortgage applications and offers.
“This is another important result for the Irish Presidency on financial services, contributing to our overall aim of enhancing consumer protection.”
Irish Parents need to have their children vaccinated against Measles warns James Reilly
MINISTER FOR HEALTH URGES PARENTS TO BELIEVE THE FACTS AND NOT ‘HYPE’ AROUND VACCINATION
Children are being exposed to the potentially deadly measles disease if their parents do not get them vaccinated, the Minister for Health Dr James Reilly has warned.
Dr Reilly said the measles outbreak in Wales, which has now surpassed 900 cases and claimed the life of a 25-year-old man last week, ought to give “pause for serious thought” in Ireland given the proximity of the two countries.
Speaking at the launch of a public information campaign to coincide with European Immunisation Week, Dr Reilly said parents who do not allow their children get the MMR (Measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine are running a “grim risk” of exposing their children to a preventable disease.
A previous outbreak of measles in Dublin in 2000 which affected 1,500 children led to three deaths and more than 100 hospitalisations.
The outbreak was blamed on a health scare propagated by British doctor Dr Andrew Wakefield who linked the MMR vaccine to autism and bowel disease. He was subsequently found to have falsified the results and was struck off.
Vaccination rates dropped to below 70 per cent following that health scare.
An outbreak last year in west Cork which affected 60 children coincided with an area where the MMR vaccine uptake is considerably lower than the general population.
Dr Reilly said the MMR uptake at between 82 per cent and 85 per cent of the eligible population is “not good enough” as the target figure is 95 per cent.
Currently 92 per cent of one-year-old children received the vaccine last year though there are pockets in west Cork and inner-city Dublin where the uptake figures are lower than that.
He urged parents to “think about the facts and not the hype” around vaccination and to seek advice from medical professionals if they are worried.
He also advised health professionals to ensure that misinformation about vaccination does not become the norm.
The public health campaign involves television radio and bus shelter advertisements which will run for four months.
HSE consultant in public health medicine Dr Brenda Corcoran said they did not have the budget for a television advertising campaign but were approached by pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
Dr Corcoran maintained the partnership was “good for both parties” and was discussed with the HSE procurement section before being passed.
She said Pfizer provided only one of the 12 vaccines currently given to Irish children and that was through competitive tendering.
Vaccination rates for MMR are improving every year, but there is still a risk among those children who were not vaccinated around the Millennium and are now teenagers. They are being offered catch-up vaccinations.
The HSE has set a goal of having Ireland measles-free by 2015, a goal which will not be accomplished unless the 95 per cent target rate for vaccination is reached.
Dr Corcoran said there is also a problem with the Whooping Cough vaccine as the present vaccine only lasts for 10 years. There were 480 cases of Whooping Cough last year and a further 80 cases to date this year.
Doctors now believe that a single whooping cough vaccine dose is not sufficient and that a second dose is necessary.
Major urgency lacking when it comes to climate change
The ‘interconnectedness’ of hunger, nutrition and climate justice really hit home at a recent conference in Dublin
Climate change is a worthy issue which most of us feel we should be deeply concerned about – but not just yet.
In the cosy Western World, there is a distinct lack of urgency about the problem. We wrongly feel the impact of climate change on us is still generations away. We mistakenly assume that, for now, its main effect is on ice caps in arctic regions, the forests in Central America and the plains of Africa.
But at the Hunger, Nutrition and Climate Justice conference at Dublin Castle last week, there was a tangible zeal and sense of immediacy about the endangerment of the planet.
Former US Vice President Al Gore warned against sleep walking towards the cliff. He cited the damage caused in New Jersey last year by Hurricane Sandy, floods in Pakistan which displaced 20 million people, downpours this year in Australia, and the Arctic icecape diminished by 50 per cent in the last four decades. He thundered about storm surges, rising seas, and the need to protect humankind.
Then Gore gave further illustrations about the effects of climate change. He recalled how many people died from heat stress in 2003, how increases in temperature cause crop production to decline, and how world food prices dramatically spiked following the Russian drought a few years ago. He said television images had been like ‘a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.’
These are scary warnings, but the organisers of the conference weren’t just concerned about climate change but also the ‘inter-connectedness’ of hunger, nutrition and climate justice.
Another world-class speaker, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson shared Al Gore’s sense of urgency about safeguarding humanity. Mrs Robinson, who now runs the Foundation for Climate Justice, co-hosted the conference with the Government. She said the key issue was about how to have a viable world in 2050 and that everyone should be super-champions for the cause.
As part of the search for a ‘bold vision’, 100 representatives from communities at the forefront of climate change recounted their experiences about food shortages and initiatives to the policymakers and delegates from 60 countries.
Ireland, too, has seen some change in weather patterns. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) say it is now warmer here with fewer colder days. Parts of the country have more frequent, intense rainfall.
Globally, one person in eight does not have adequate food, one-third of children under five in developing countries won’t reach their physical or mental potential because they are ‘stunted’, and world food production will have to increase by 60% by 2050 to meet projected demand. Climate change adds a new dimension to this by changing growing seasons and the frequency of droughts and floods.
I joined one of the workshops or Learning Circles where some of these community representatives laid out their stall. Farmers in countries like Tanzania and Columbia want more transparency about how donor money is spent. They want to be informed and involved in research. They want a greater say in decision making and implementation of Government policy – much like the social partnership that has operated in this country.
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