Madam, - Your Editorial on "Funding Pensions" (October 14th) correctly identified the crisis facing the private pension system - a system which is heavily reliant on an uncertain equities market, and which is therefore inherently incapable of guaranteeing today's workers a secure income in retirement.
You also noted the growing trend away from defined benefit schemes and towards defined contribution schemes in the private sector, while pointing out that similar "adjustments" have not taken place in the public sector.
Your Editorial concluded by suggesting that "the growing disparity between the respective costs and benefits of private and public service pensions is clearly inequitable. And in these straitened times, the differential is neither politically defensible nor - for the taxpayers who must pay - economically sustainable".
It should, of course, be stated that private pensions are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer through tax reliefs.
Quite apart from that caveat, however, Tasc would argue that the nub of this matter is not any disparity between private and public sector pension costs and benefits. Rather, what is at issue is whether - as a society - we should continue relying on the private pensions industry to secure our futures.
Tasc has been working with the Trinity Pensions Group to develop a new and sustainable pensions model which would combine a universalised social welfare pension with a second-tier social insurance earnings-related pension.
This would still allow people to save for retirement, but would provide a secure alternative to the risk and uncertainty associated with the various forms of private pension provision.
The international financial crisis has exposed the flimsy foundations of the private pensions system built on the shifting sands of the equities market.
We now need a public debate on the alternatives, and Tasc will shortly be publishing its proposals as a contribution to that debate. - Yours, etc,
PAULA CLANCY,
Director,
TASC - A Think-Tank on Action
for Social Change,
26 Sth Frederick Street,
Dublin 2.