Draw Breath

Am I dreaming or something: without at all denying that Ireland has a pensions crisis (with about 1/3 to be added to the pensions bill in the next 25 years, as opposed to the UK’s ±10%), why is it that the financial meltdown has focused people’s attention on public sector pensions? More particularly, people are absolutely right that it is unfair that workers in the public sector have good pensions while those in the private sector have ones where the individual takes on all the risk associated with posting their savings in the casino door in the hope that, when they retire, the markets will be on a good run. It is very unfair.

But since when is it a good solution to insist that, if I have a shit pension and you have a good one, we should both have shit pensions?

Surely people would be better served to ask why it is that a return to a decent state pension, paid for out of taxes, is not an option. Why are they forced to bet their savings on the markets? And added to that, why are the people who manage those savings doing such a bad job?