Hole in Ireland’s largest pension schemes doubles to €8.5bn

The hole in Ireland’s largest pension schemes has more than doubled in cash terms this year, a study published this morning says.

The annual Pensions Accounting Briefing from advisers LCP Ireland states that the deficit in the 29 defined benefit, or final salary, schemes studied had surged from €4 billion at the end of last year to more than €8.5 billion at the end of August.

The rising cash deficit comes despite a 12 per cent rise in global stock markets over the same period.

LCP examined the pension schemes of the 16 largest Irish listed companies in terms of their stock market capitalisation along with 13 semi-state companies in the report.

Only one of the companies - RTE - was fully funded, having enough assets to meet its pension liabilities. It was 101 per cent funded.

The average funding level for the schemes studied was 85 per cent in 2013 - up from 81 per cent in the 2012 study. The two studies are not directly comparable as some companies have closed their final salary pension schemes since 2012.

Bank of Ireland had the largest cash deficit at the end of 2013 - €841 million - although that figure is a substantial improvement on the 2012 figure of €1.075 billion.

Smurfit Kappa, Diageo, CIE and CRH complete the top five largest deficits.

The report says that Irish pension schemes continue to invest more heavily in equities than their peers internationally - 50 per cent compared with a FTSE 100 company average of 33 per cent - despite moves by some companies to reduce their holdings.

Ryanair has the highest equity exposure at 77 per cent, a figure that has increased on 2012.

LCP says the Government levy on private pensions has exacerbated the deficit problem, with more than €2.3 billion taken from pensions schemes - around €1 billion of it from the 29 companies in the study.