Pensions

Legislation providing for the automatic enrolment of around 800,000 workers into pension schemes next year has been approved by the Oireachtas. The Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024 provides for a new retirement savings scheme for workers who are not already members of a pensio

New legislation on automatic pension enrolment will end Ireland's status as an international "outlier", the government has said. The Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024, which will shortly be brought to the Oireachtas, will pave the way for around 800,000 workers to be brought in

New legislation is set to prevent workers from being forced to retire before they reach the state pension age. Ministers have approved the general scheme of the Employment (Restriction of Certain Mandatory Retirement Ages) Bill 2023, which will prevent the enforcement of mandatory retirement ages lo

More than three-quarters of pension professionals believe that pensions regulations in Ireland are too complex, according to a survey by Mason Hayes & Curran LLP. The business law firm surveyed more than 120 HR and pension professionals attending its recent webinar, Attracting & Retaining Ta

Emergency legislation is needed to prevent thousands of divorcees from losing hundreds of thousands of euros in payments as a result of changes to EU law, the Law Society of Ireland has said. The Law Society today said it has alerted the Pensions Authority and practitioners to the serious effect of

Most pension professionals do not believe plans for auto-enrolment in workplace pension schemes will happen as planned in 2024, according to a survey by Mason Hayes & Curran LLP. Ireland is the only OECD country that doesn’t yet operate an auto enrolment system or similar scheme. The new s

The Pensions Authority secured convictions in three of the six prosecution cases it concluded last year, according to the statutory body's latest annual report. The Authority regulates and supervises compliance with the requirements of the Pensions Act 1990, as amended, by trustees of occupational p

Plans to launch an auto-enrolment pension scheme in Ireland by 2022 "may not survive the ongoing economic fall-out from the COVID-19 crisis", Mason Hayes & Curran (MHC) has said. The business law firm today published the results of a survey carried out in partnership with the Irish Institute of

Mason Hayes & Curran has announced the appointment of Stephen Gillick, head of the firm's pensions team, to the Pensions Council. The body was established in 2013 to advise ministers on pensions issues and has 11 members, including chairman Jim Murray and Pensions Authority chief executive Brend

Plans for a new automatic enrolment pension system have moved forward after the Government approved a large part of the design for the new system. Around 600,000 workers will be automatically enrolled in retirement savings schemes under the plans, which cover workers over the age of 23 and earning m

Three nuns who stopped receiving their Portuguese state pension after returning to Ireland have had the payments reinstated following an intervention by the Irish Ombudsman. The nuns had been without pension payments for over six months after returning to Ireland, having spent decades in Portugal pr

Claire Edgar, partner at Francis Hanna & Co Solicitors in Belfast, writes on new pensions guidance which has been published to help family law practitioners in ancillary relief cases. A recently published report provides guidance for how pensions should be treated in divorce. The Guide to the Tr

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) has settled a case against the Department for Communities to back-pay state pension entitlements to a transgender woman. Frances Shields, who received her Gender Recognition Certificate in February 2015 and applied for her State pension in April 2

Lawyers from Matheson and Herbert Smith Freehills recently addressed businesses on the use of bulk annuities to reduce risk in defined benefit pension schemes. The event, co-hosted by the law firms and consulting firm Mercer, examined how factors including ongoing market volatility, historically low