Perhaps the most historic moment in the Republic's pensions history - the recent establishment of the National Pensions Reserve Fund and the appointment of the Commissioners who are to manage it - has been marred by none other than the man most immediately responsible, Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy. Why?
The Government and the Minister must, of course, be congratulated for following the 1998 advice of the Pensions Board to set up such a fund. In its very carefully thought-out report, Securing Retirement Incomes - the culmination of an extensive consultation process initiated by the 1994-97 government - the Pensions Board made detailed recommendations regarding the partial funding of social welfare pensions and happily these have now been implemented.
So also have some of the relevant recommendations of the Commission on Public Service Pensions, which reported more recently and advised partial pre-funding of elements of the public service pension arrangements.
Until now, the development of national pensions policy had been characterised by a partnership approach in which unions, employers, governments and other vital interests in the pensions arena had worked to agree on the best way forward for the Irish people, given our demographic, economic, social and family patterns, and the way these are changing; and also given our broad consensus on the need to avoid poverty in retirement and old age as a major national priority.
The partnership approach has driven the development of national pensions policy in the Republic to the point where we may well be one of the few states in Europe to successfully defuse the so-called "pensions timebomb" that threatens others who have not engaged in similarly long-term planning.
What a nasty blow, then, for the trade union movement - one of the very active partners in this process for many years - to find itself excluded from participation in the management of "the people's pension fund" for which we had long been arguing and helping to plan.
This is particularly so as the wording of the governing legislation implied strongly that the experts to be appointed as the commissioners and custodians of this huge fund would include not only persons "who have acquired substantial expertise and experience at a senior level" in "investment or international business management finance or economics, the law, actuarial practice, accountancy and auditing the Civil Service" and "the pensions industry", but also, significantly, in "consumer protection" and in "trade union representation".
What a nasty blow for the women of the Republic, also, to discover that only one out of the seven commissioners was to be a woman: only 14 per cent of the total, compared with the 40 per cent female representation on State boards to which the Government is supposed to be committed.
I happen to think that the one woman commissioner - Ms Brid Horan - can probably make up, through quality, for what women may be lacking in quantity on the Commissioner Board. But that's not really the point, is it? The point is that when he was appointing the seven commissioners, Mr McCreevy should and could have ensured a better gender balance. A further good reason for this is that a majority of older people - and especially older people at risk of poverty - are women. The consumer interest would therefore also have been well served by the appointment of more women.
The Minister argued in the Dail that this was an "expert" group, rather than a "representative" group and - just to add insult to injury - that suitably qualified women were hard to find. But in fact there was no need to counterpose "expert" and "representative" in this way as there are plenty of people who are both, just as there are plenty of lawyers, accountants, economists, bankers and pensions experts who happen to be women.
Indeed, the Pensions Board itself is a good example of a body that successfully combines expertise, representativeness and gender balance, both in its staffing at all levels and in the composition of its board.
Trade unionists see Mr McCreevy's choice of commissioners as a deliberate snub to women, to working people and their trade unions, and to the process of social partnership. We could have done without that blow at present, particularly in an area of work - developing national pensions policy - in which the partnership approach has so far been very successful.
Rosheen Callender is SIPTU's National Equality Secretary. She is an economist, a member of the Executive Council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), Chairperson of the Trustees of SIPTU's Pension Fund, and represents the ICTU and member-trustees on the Pensions Board.
