Madam, – In your Editorial (June 24th), you succinctly sum up the problems besetting pension funds over the past few years, and the distress and disappointment facing many potential retirees. Hundreds of thousands of people have had a portion of their salary deducted and channelled into a pension scheme or, if self-employed, have been investing part of their income into a retirement portfolio, for most of their working lives. As you rightly said, most people probably had little financial understanding of the investment choices or the risks involved, but depended on what they assumed was the expertise of their financial advisers, of whom many have now been shown to be sadly inept.
For those like myself who were receiving regular estimates of what their pensions would be on retirement, it now seems they were wildly optimistic, and the promise of attractive terminal bonuses mere figments of the imagination. Even Brendan Kennedy, the CEO of the Pensions Board, concurs with this.
It is too late now for anyone in their 60s to improve on their situation. The State is being asked to intervene, but, as usual, it is those who have given most and asked least over the years who will get the cold shoulder. If there is any lesson to be learnt, it is that the advice of so-called experts in the fields of finance and economics can never be relied on again. – Yours, etc,