State Savings Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-18
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Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

As I have said, the benefits are very much there. Somebody at the age of 23 may feel they are a long way from the age of 66. Looking around the room, I do not see anybody in that space. I assure the Members I am talking about the age of 66. However, it does happen. You get there very quickly and you do not notice it. We genuinely do have a major gap in pension coverage in this country. It is fine now, when we have four workers for every person over the age of 66, but, by the time we get to 2050, which is not that far away, we will have two workers for every such person. I reiterate that the State pension will continue to be the bedrock of our pensions system but we also have to ensure that people have adequate income provision for their retirement years. That is what MyFutureFund is about. We are the last country in the OECD to do this. That is not something to be proud of but it has allowed us to learn from systems across the OECD and from mistakes that were made. We have tried to ensure that our system is user-friendly and that it supports participants and delivers the outcomes we want. The figure of 835,000 enrolees has shown that to be right.

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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