Social Welfare and Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System (Amendment) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-10 ============================================================ Maria McCormack (SF), Labour Panel I thank the Minister for coming in. I have some points to make respectfully, as we differ on some issues. I am hoping we can work collaboratively on them. "A recipe for austerity" and "a devastating setback for disabled people" were the words of Social Justice Ireland and the Disability Federation of Ireland, respectively, in response to the budget I am very conscious that this budget did not even keep in line with welfare payments from 2020 values. I am not interested in playing politics with people's livelihoods. People who a straddling poverty deserve clear assurances and honest messages but I do acknowledge that Sinn Féin's alternative budget would have alleviated people from poverty and protected our most vulnerable citizens and our hardest working citizens. Budget 2026, where Sinn Féin wanted to increase the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance, Government refused. Where Sinn Féin wanted to restore the right to retire at 65 years of age, Government refused. Where Sinn Féin wanted to reward €300 in fuel allowance, Government gave less than half. Families will go home this winter to no energy credits. We know the child poverty figure has increased. It was one in five, it is now one in four. There are a lot of concerns among people about the new auto-enrolment scheme. While I do have to commend the Minister for bringing forward this scheme, and I do really welcome the idea of a pension, but there are some areas in it that we really do need to tweak. There are some areas of concern here. Citizens Information staff tell us that they are in the dark around how it will be implemented. That is something we definitely have to work on. They are entirely overwhelmed by people's concerns around it. That is what they have said. In a cost-of-living crisis, it is wholly inappropriate to lock workers out of their own money for six months. It is difficult for a worker on €20,000 a year to manage without €20 or €30. For a family in poverty, that €20 or €30 can be a shopping or energy bill or pay for dinners, bus fares and school runs. As that money leaves the pockets of workers, it is not going to a secure State fund. It is not going near NAMA but rather to private pension funds to which the State will gift billions in the opening years of the scheme. To lock workers out of their own money to benefit private funds is not only insulting; it is a damaging blow to the pockets of our lowest workers. I am incredibly concerned and have recently been made aware of some of the steps the Government took in the development of the scheme, namely the €150 million contract awarded to Tata Consultancy Services. This company makes up part of the Tata Group whose subsidiaries have developed an array of weapons used by Israeli defence forces in Gaza and the West Bank. I am particularly anxious to discover whether the Government assessed these deplorable acts before awarding the contract and if this particular contract contributed to the plan to remove services from the occupied territories Bill. We then hear warnings from Chartered Accountants Ireland about potential data protection risks, which Senator O'Donovan mentioned, including inappropriate access to sensitive payroll information. If the State wants workers to trust the scheme, these issues need to be resolved urgently. People need to know that their data will be safe. We are a very wealthy country. People should not live month to month and wonder where the new charge or deduction is coming from. We have to be very careful what companies we choose for this work. I have a severe objection to the use of Tata and anything that will associate us with such a company. We have come so far in supporting the Palestinian people that these are areas we have to be careful about and work together on in order to make the scheme better and one we can all support. --- 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/2025-12-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-10