State Savings Schemes Dail Éireann — 2026-06-18 ============================================================ Paul McAuliffe (FF), Dublin North-West I appreciate that. I reiterate my point on ensuring that people remain within the scheme. I was recently at an apprenticeship fair and one of the people encouraging people to take up apprenticeships indicated that, by participating in the workforce earlier, they would be contributing to their pensions for a much longer period than people who went on to third level. The numbers are staggering. Whenever you start paying into your pension, those extra few years make a huge difference. That is the reason the auto-enrolment scheme is so important. It is the reason it will have a real impact over decades. It is also why I want to ensure that we retain as many people as possible within the scheme and that the benefits are communicated. --- 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/dail/2026-06-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-18