Social Welfare and Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-16 ============================================================ Maria Byrne (CC), Agricultural Panel While they are still here, I would like to acknowledge the students from Newbridge College. I hope they enjoy their visit today. I welcome the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Calleary, and the staff from the Department. Maria Byrne (CC), Agricultural Panel When is it proposed to take Report Stage? Anne Rabbitte (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach Now. Maria Byrne (CC), Agricultural Panel Is that agreed? Agreed. Maria Byrne (CC), Agricultural Panel When is it proposed to take Fifth Stage? Anne Rabbitte (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach Now. Maria Byrne (CC), Agricultural Panel Is that agreed? Agreed. Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teach as an mBille tábhachtach seo a thabhairt tríd inniu. Gabhaim buíochas go háirithe as an díospóireacht a bhí againn oíche Chéadaoin. Tá sé suimiúil agus tá obair le déanamh againn. I thank the House for its co-operation in passing the Social Welfare and Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System (Amendment) Bill 2025. I thank Senators for their input and contributions on Wednesday night and at the social protection committee. I thank the officials in my Department who have worked incredibly hard on this since the beginning of the summer when we had our pre-budget forum in the Department, at which over 70 organisations came together to feed their ideas. We could not capture all of it but we captured a lot of it in the contents of this Bill, which will make an enormous difference to 1.2 million families across the country. I thank in particular my 7,000 colleagues in the Department of Social Protection who will deliver this system to homes, communities and individuals over the coming weeks and through 2026. For the information of the House, as of this morning, there were 522,185 employees registered for My Future Fund. I was in Buncrana at our social protection and Intreo office yesterday and in Letterkenny in our National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority, or NAERSA, office and with our colleagues in Tata Consultancy Services. Work is fully under way for 1 January for My Future Fund. This will have a transformative effect on the pensions and savings landscape in Ireland. I thank all who are working towards that. Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas-Chathaoirleach, leis an gcléireach agus le foireann an tSeanaid as an seans a bheith leo inniu. Maria Byrne (CC), Agricultural Panel Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire as teacht isteach sa Teach inniu agus páirt a ghlacadh sa díospóireacht. The Minister is very welcome. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-16