Passionate advocate of pensions rejects actuaries' conservative image

PCs tot up figures, not actuaries, Mr Paul O'Faherty, a member of the profession for more than 20 years likes to point out.

Being an actuary for that length of time, he defends his profession as strongly as he does the pension industry. He says the grey image of actuaries is unfair.

Small and jovial, a Bee Gees fan and an avid football watcher, Mr O'Faherty sees actuaries as often having the last laugh. "Just look at the amount of actuaries who run insurance companies around this town," he says.

His role as chairman of the Irish Association of Pension Funds (IAPF) has involved him in issues outside the normal concerns of actuaries - social protection and quality of life issues for example.

However, like most actuaries he likes to get things right and that means exactly right. Every time he mentions a figure there is no rounding-off, it is right down to the decimal point.

He firmly believes that pensions are not just a question of random figures, but an important part of people's lives, however unglamorous the subject is to many.

He says that in his "day job" as a director of Mercer, the group pensions company, there is nothing better than meeting an individual who has thought seriously about their pension and put the right money by, thus ensuring peace of mind in their twilight years.

However, equally, he says, there is nothing worse than meeting someone who did not, for whatever reason, ever pay into a pension scheme and who comes to him in a panic, knowing that their quality of life might be about to take a turn for the worse.

"There is nothing you can really do for them at that stage and it is often quite sad," he adds.

The IAPF represents pension funds and the companies who manage those funds. It represents the 200,000 people who are in occupational pension schemes. Those schemes between them contain about £25 billion. This makes the IAPF one of the largest representative organisations in the State. Therefore, it is no surprise when Mr O'Faherty says the IAPF is "in good standing with most politicians". Any move against the pension industry is likely to draw the same grassroots and political reaction as that which greeted the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, when he sought to impose a tax on the return from credit unions' accounts.

However, despite the importance of pensions to many people, Mr O'Faherty emphasises that for others they currently mean nothing. "There are about 200,000 people in the workforce who chose not to pay into a pension at all," he says.

They include young people, women, part-time workers, people in small companies and, of course, the self-employed. On top of this, he points out, there are another 200,000 people who cannot afford to pay into a pension scheme.

"Many of these people are low-paid workers and will be solely dependent on a State pension."

As a way of dealing with their situation, he suggests that the State pension should be increased to 35 per cent of average earnings for a single person (doubled for married people). In current terms this would represent £100 per week for a single person.

The implementation of this proposal would cost the State £400 million a year and, he adds, the mechanism to pay for it - increases in PRSI - has to be faced. "Pensions are not a free lunch, they have to be paid for, so there is no point in trying to get around that point," he says.

Stories about pensioners living alone in squalor, he says, are probably becoming rarer nowadays, but he argues that the State pension, which is the sole income for some people, is currently inadequate. Another measure the IAPF has called for is to link the State pension to increases in wages rather than inflation.

All these issues are currently being weighed up by the Government as part of the National Pensions Policy Initiative. Central to this is the study of the Irish pension industry by the Pensions Board whose recommendations are currently being implemented by the Government.

Mr O'Faherty uses a transport analogy to describe the progress which has been made in the last few years. "It is like a train journey from Dublin to Cork and we are currently stopped at Newbridge," he says.

Because he finds himself talking pensions all day, certain phrases and cliches annoy him, he says. "I really don't like this phrase, demographic timebomb," he says. "There is no demographic timebomb, we have a large number of young people all right, but they are not looking to pick up their pensions now," he adds. Even if there is a problem, he sees it differently from some of the more alarmist commentators. "Countries like Germany and France have a 2005 problem in terms of their ageing population, we have more of a 2050 problem," he says.

As for the 500,000 people who are in a pension scheme, he says the system has served them well, but reform is needed. "There is now a lot more flexible work practices, so the idea of the one pension staying with the one person throughout their career may not be the standard model anymore," he states. "Pensions linked to careers, not jobs," is another way of putting it.

Behind all of this, he adds, is the issue of quality of life. "With life expectancy getting longer, people should be able to enjoy those later years with some kind of reassurance," he states. The view that a house is an equal form of security for later life is one he quickly dismisses. "You can't eat a house," he says.

While he is a director of Mercer, he sees that job as separate to his work as chairman of the IAPF and refuses to give a view on the potential merger of the Irish Pensions Trust, the largest group pension company in the Republic, and Mercer. "I like to keep the two hats apart," he says.

Mr O'Faherty uses little jargon and his training as an actuary was worlds away from the lengthy courses offered in the subject in some of the universities nowadays.

His entry into a full-time and, of course, pensionable job was through a grade A in Maths which he was always good at. He started with New Ireland and in 1980 joined a company which was soon bought out by Mercer, his present employer. "I have been up and down Adelaide Road, no matter what company I seem to work for," he says.

The Mercer commitment means that a lot of IAPF business is done after hours. He often leaves Mercer's office in the evening with his suitcase stuffed with IAPF material. "While I have enjoyed this job at IAPF immensely, one benefit when my two years are up is that I will be able to have more time with my family."

This often involves ferrying his two children to football matches, but "becoming a half decent golf player" is an ambition. With only a few months to go before he gets his free time back, he says he is happy with the way things have gone so far. "I suppose it has broadened my experiences," he adds.

He has a firm belief in the pensions community - the pension holders and the fund managers, who he says are not the "ultra-conservative group" some people like to think.

"For example, the pension fund managers here invest more in equities than their US counterparts and that says something about their attempts to get a high return."

The current slide in stock exchanges around the world does not scare him and he says it shouldn't perturb pension holders too much either. "What happens on one particular day is not important for pension funds, it is how does the stock market perform over a 15 or 20-year period for instance," he says.

However, he maintains there is a shortage of suitable stock on the Dublin market which forces pension fund managers to invest 40 per cent of their funds overseas.

On the subject of regulation, while not trying to sound complacent, he points out that there has yet to be a major scandal in the Irish pensions industry. He attributes this to "everyone in the industry working together".