The Irish government has been urged to stop “sitting on its hands” and address the mismanagement of defined benefit schemes across the industry.

According to the Irish Times, Independents4Change Teachta Dála Clare Daly has called for an official inquiry into DB schemes at the “top of the pensions industry” including IPT, Mercer and Irish Life.

These firms, Daly claims, are badly managing their DB schemes at the “expense of citizens and pensioners”.

“The same names appear across all of the trustees and across the industry. There needs to be an inquiry into this,” she said.

The TD noted a number of pension scheme closures including that by the Independent News & Media that had “unilaterally closed the defined-benefit scheme on the back of a €23m shortfall, despite the fact that this was the company that got a €140m bailout from the taxpayer.”

Daly claimed that the Independent was the “latest solvent employer” to close its DB scheme because it didn’t want to “foot the bill”.

Furthermore, the member of parliament said that the Central Remedial Clinic had also shut its pension scheme that had a €2m deficit and the same amount would be paid from the employees’ pension pot to firms and advisers involved in the scheme. “This is because the government put wind-up costs higher than members’ benefits,” she said.

Daly complained that the same pension managers will unfairly benefit from all stages of the closure process including advising trustees, acting as actuaries, money from the wind-up and receiving additional money from transferring people into a new DC scheme as well as money from administering those schemes.

Daly has raised her concerns with the Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar who referred the TD onto a pensions official from his department. “Yeah it’s very bad form, it is bad, but they’re not doing anything illegal,” he said.

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