The Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mr Séamus Brennan, has directed the Pensions Board to bring forward its statutory review of the State's pensions strategy.
In a speech to the Irish Association of Pension Funds last night, Mr Brennan said he had asked the board to complete its review and submit a report to him by the middle of this year.
The review was due to be completed by September 2006, but Mr Brennan said action on pensions was needed now.
He said despite all the incentives the overall coverage figures for pensions remained disappointing.
Mr Brennan said he was concerned that only half of those working who require private pension cover have a pension scheme and that 50 per cent of private pensions were totally inadequate.
"There is a good chance that up to 75 per cent of the workforce either have no pension or have a pension that falls well short of what they will need for a comfortable retirement," he said.
Mr Brennan said the situation for women was particularly serious with only 46 per cent of those in the workforce having pensions.
He praised the National Pensions Awareness Campaign in helping to firmly plant pensions on the agendas of more and more people.
But he said: "The reality is that we are failing to mobilise the general public and employers to start contributing to pensions in the numbers required to achieve our overall targets in any sort of reasonable timescale."
Mr Brennan said one innovative route to encourage people to take up pensions involves SSIAs. "I have asked the Pensions Board to examine ways of tapping into the valuable savings habit the SSIA's have solidly established," he said.
