Maher retires as chief executive of Pensions Board

Anne Maher heaves some weighty tomes off the shelves of an office in the Pensions Board headquarters on Dublin's Lower Mount Street.

"Feel the weight of the things," she says of the hefty 1998, 2005 and 2006 reports on Ireland's pension needs, produced during her tenure as chief executive of the Pensions Board. Enough research has been done now, she says. It's time to bite the bullet.

Maher left the board yesterday after a decade. Last night, after a farewell lunch, she was heading to Paris to receive an Investment & Pensions Europe (IPE) European Gold Award for the Outstanding Pensions Contribution 2006.

Her other recent recognitions include an entry in Ireland's latest Who's Who. Maher was somewhat irritated to find that her lengthy entry in the socialite's bible includes her home address. The fulsome compliments on everything - including the way she turns herself out - softened her up, though. She paid out the €50 for the book.

Maher leaves her high-profile post - she estimates that she delivered about 200 speeches domestically and on the international circuit - at a time when the Government is edging nervously towards seizing the pensions nettle.

Sceptics believe the election spectre will send the Government running for cover. Maher is adamant that the Green Paper on pensions will be published, as scheduled, by next Easter. "Government has committed to a decision by September next year," she notes.

Since she took the helm of the Pensions Board, there have been solid advances. Admittedly, Ireland was coming from a low base.

Maher singles out the board's effective campaigns to promote pensions awareness as an achievement.

"Pensions awareness on the streets is now over 80 per cent," she says.

The board has also worked determinedly on improving compliance, which Maher says was not taken seriously at the time she took up the position.

The board has tightened up supervision, introduced a whistleblowing system and worked on educational programmes. "At the time I was first involved, a lot of people didn't even know they were pension scheme trustees," Maher recalls.

All is not well, however.

Despite the awareness campaigns, training and speeches, the Pensions Board has not managed to push the percentage of workers with pension cover much above the 50 per cent level it hovered at a decade ago.

Of a two million-strong workforce in the Republic, just 1.1 million have some sort of private pension.

"It has crept up but hasn't gone anywhere near the 70 per cent we aspired to," Maher admits.

Unsurprisingly, she is measured in her assessment of the situation.

"I wouldn't at all call it a crisis," she says. "We haven't made any serious mistakes in terms of direction."

The Republic is nowhere near as hard-pressed as the likes of Germany, whose cabinet agreed on Wednesday to lift the country's retirement age from 65 to 67.

The Republic still has 20 years to sort out the pension issue, but Maher says this does not mean there is scope for complacency.

"It takes five years to make a major change," she says.

A plethora of possible solutions are being batted hither and thither. These range from a variety of enhancements to the voluntary pension system, including simplifying it SSIAstyle and improving tax incentives, to the introduction of mandatory pensions.

As far back as 1998, the Pensions Board recommended to the Government to enhance the voluntary private system. Given Maher's experience of people's recalcitrance, she now seems to have planted her flag in the more controversial mandatory camp.

There is "no evidence" that any country with a voluntary system has cracked the pension problem, she says.

"The UK and the US got stuck at the same point of pension coverage and couldn't get very far above 50 per cent. The only countries with high levels of cover have some form of mandatory system."

Among the stars in the global pension firmament are Chile, Switzerland and Australia, which all have versions of mandatory systems. In the Netherlands, where membership of pension schemes is voluntary from the state's point of view but is imposed by industries, cover is at a fairly impressive 95 per cent.

The UK, which like the Netherlands had a strong pension saving tradition but which is creaking under mountains of reactive legislation introduced after the Maxwell scandal, is now opting for a "soft mandatory" system.

This means employees are put in a pension scheme automatically and can opt out if they choose.

"We have no experience of how that will work - whether people will opt out or whether employers will encourage them to opt out," Maher says.

The debate over whether mandatory pension cover should be introduced in Ireland should provide plenty of fireworks.

Employers are already hot under the collar at the prospect of being forced to contribute to employees' pensions.

Pensions Board chairman Tiernan O'Mahony said publicly some months ago - in an avowedly personal capacity - that he does not believe employers should be forced to contribute to pensions. The diplomatic Maher is more opaque.

"Employers have very genuine concerns about competitiveness and costs as it's a small open economy," she says. "Any pension system has to be a shared thing between employer, employee and the State. It's a pay issue, and the split of the costs of pensions should be decided in the partnership talks."

Whatever is decided, people have to accept that providing adequate pensions will cost money, she says. "Whatever way you go about it someone has to pay."

Maher expects pensions to feature as an issue in next year's elections and sounds decidedly pleased at the thought. Pensions were nowhere near the top of the policy agenda a decade ago.

"Pensions would never have been mentioned in elections before," she says. "Politicians usually have enough pressing problems and it's hard to develop an interest in something that won't be a crisis."

She's probably right. Sinn Féin is already at the hustings, coming out a while ago in condemnation of tax breaks for private pensions.

Maher's judgment on that view is that "if you have a voluntary system and it doesn't have tax incentives, it won't work at all".

Ideally, she wants everyone who is working to be paying into some kind of pension. She has been cleaning out her office, riffling through the years of speeches before throwing them out, and says she noticed that message as a recurring mantra.

The clean-up done, she says she is "happy" with where she is leaving things. "I feel whatever you're going to do, you have done it in 10 years."

She may now believe it is time for action rather than more studies, but says there was little option for the country but to take its time and move softly softly.

"Ten years ago, we had very little actual real research. To jump into things would not have been good."