"You can't hide from your financial future forever," the Pensions Board is warning workers in advance of the National Pensions Awareness Week, which formally kicks off next Monday, writes Laura Slattery

Yesterday, Dublin residents may have noticed one of five mobile advertising vehicles - "admobiles" - travelling around the city centre, delivering its message to the working-age population. Today, four of these admobiles depart for Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford in order to spread the word that starting a pension early is a sensible and tax-efficient way of saving for retirement.

The Pensions Board is also mid-way through a television advertising campaign that dramatises what it sees as a worrying lack of pension provision among Irish workers.

A farmer hides behind a haystack, a waiter crouches underneath a table and a young female office worker lurks behind a plant. Each one is presumably living in the moment and failing to face up to their future.

This future, the ads imply, could be marred by pensioner poverty if they don't start paying potentially lifestyle-crimping sums into their pension now.

But first of all, they will need to start a pension. Only one in two workers have their own pension and the Government hopes to increase that proportion to 70 per cent over the next few years.

The latest Quarterly National Household Survey, published on Tuesday, indicates that progress is slow. The pensions coverage rate for all persons in employment aged 20-69 is 52.4 per cent, compared to 51.2 per cent at the start of 2001.

So why do so many people not have a pension? Self-employed people have to rely on their own savings to fund their pensions. Many shy away from the whole idea, preferring instead to plough every last cent into expanding their businesses and then dabbling in property investment to provide their retirement nest egg.

Meanwhile, up until this time last year, employers were not obligated to provide their staff with pensions and many companies - especially smaller employers - avoided the significant expense that running an occupational pension scheme incurs.

Even within large, established companies with fine pension benefits for their permanent staff, contract, part-time and temporary workers, many of them women, were typically excluded from the occupational scheme.

However, since September 15th last year, employers must give all employees who are not covered by any occupational scheme access to a standard Personal Retirement Savings Account (PRSA), a type of portable pension with very low minimum contribution levels.

But, as this week's figures show, the introduction of PRSAs has yet to have a significant impact on pension coverage.

Pensions Board chief executive Ms Anne Maher warned this week that the board will recommend that the Government looks at mandatory pensions if coverage has not increased significantly by the time PRSAs are reviewed in 2006. In the interim, the board is cracking down on employers who have not complied with their statutory obligations, writing to 64,000 companies last week asking them to clarify their pensions position.

The services, hospitality, retail and farming sectors, where there are higher proportions of part-time and seasonal employees and little tradition of pension provision, are key areas of concern for the board.

Nevertheless, despite some clear shirking by employers of their legal obligations, the Pensions Board is also trying to talk up the importance of saving for retirement to workers who do have access to a pension scheme or PRSA but, for whatever reason, are not contributing.

"There are plenty of employers out there who have very, very good pension schemes. It is now incumbent on employees to take up the mantle, take responsibility and start a pension," says Mr David Malone, who is heading up the board's National Pensions Awareness Campaign for its second year.

"The word itself - pension - puts people off," he says. "It conjures up for people an image of something high finance, complex, problematic, not for me."

The Pensions Board is now hoping to demystify the subject, referring to pensions as "replacement income".

In other words, every week or month for decades, a worker receives an envelope containing their pay cheque or payslip. At roughly age 65, they stop receiving the envelopes. How will they replace that income?

Spurring on the drive to increase the popularity of pensions is the fact that we are living longer than before.

Life expectancy at age 65 is now 15.4 years for men and 18.7 years for women. Unless we plan to work until we drop, we could be forced to rely on a State pension, which pays just €167.30 a week, for decades if we don't start a pension.

The second reason why people should bother with pensions, as opposed to any other kind of investment fund, is that it makes tax sense to do so, especially for people who pay tax at the top rate of 42 per cent.

Contributions can be offset against income tax, subject to annual limits. So for a standard rate (20 per cent) taxpayer, a contribution of €100 effectively only costs them €80, while for someone who pays tax at the top rate of 42 per cent, it costs just €58.

Thirdly, younger employees wholly uninterested in the concept of pensions should remember that an occupational pension scheme is effectively part of their pay - deferred pay - and, therefore, is not to be sniffed at.

If your employer isn't operating or letting you in to an occupational pension scheme, they are actually paying you substantially less than the company next door, which offers the same salary but also contributes to a pension on behalf of its staff.

Although employers have to give employees excluded from occupational pension schemes access to PRSAs, they are not obliged to contribute a cent to the PRSA.

And even if employers do have an occupational scheme, their worth can vary wildly, depending mainly on whether the scheme is "defined benefit" (very good) or "defined contribution" (not so great).

Jobseekers often don't ask prospective employers about pensions, understandably focusing on the headline salary range and scale, or alternatively feeling that they are not in a position to be picky.

But when, at the end of an interview, employers ask candidates "do you have any questions for us?" Mr Malone hopes that people won't simply mutter "no, you're grand" but ask instead what type and level of pension is included in the benefits package.

The Pensions Board's campaign also emphasises the value of starting a pension early.

According to its online calculator (at www.pensions.ie), a male aged 25 who earns €30,000 will have to contribute around €70 a week to his pension if he wants his retirement income to be the equivalent of two-thirds of his working income.

But if he waits until he is 40 to start his pension, he will have to put aside €132 a week to achieve the same target.

In many cases, it is not that people are hiding from their financial future, it is simply that the financial present is far too grim and uncertain to contemplate how they may fund their retirement.

Yet the mass take-up of Special Savings Incentive Accounts and widespread saving for house deposits suggests that Irish people can be keen savers when it suits them.

"The tradition of saving is there, but the long-term planning isn't. People aren't taking into account what they are going to do when they retire," concludes Mr Malone. "It is one habit that we recommend people take up."

Information booklets published by the Pensions Board are available free of charge on www.pensionsboard.ie, by emailing info@pensionsboard.ie or ringing lo-call 1890 656 565.