Business group calls for PRSAs to be scrapped

Business organisation Isme has called for the Personal Retirement Savings Accounts (PRSA) scheme to be scrapped immediately and branded it a "total and complete" disaster.

The association claims they are complex, restrictive and inflexible and has suggested they are replaced by an SSIA-type product managed by the National Treasury Management Agency,

The Pensions Board also came under fire from ISME for what it described as a "blinkered" approach in promoting PRSAs as a pension cure-all.

Chief executive of the business body Mark Fielding said that instead of providing consumers with an administrative-friendly, low-cost pension product, the opposite had occurred.

"One of the central issues that the PRSA was intended to address is the limited range of suppliers in the market place," he said. "In practice a review of the list of providers would show that all, excluding one, were existing players in the pensions market."

The association has cited problems transferring from occupational pension schemes to PRSAs and the restriction of investment options as reasons why take-up of the pension savings account was low.

Mr Fielding held up the SSIA accounts as an example of how to catch the public's attention.

"Pensions offer, at the top tax rate, 42 per cent, a much better deal than SSIAs, and yet they struggle to catch the attention. Isme would suggest that if tax relief was not something one claimed after paying a retirement contribution but was something the State 'invested' in one's pension for 'free', this would get the attention it deserves."

Isme also rejected the idea of mandatory pensions, claiming the cost to smaller employers would be prohibitive.