There has been much talk about what the Government is going to do, which is conveniently hard to measure, and I want to speak of some things the Government has done. I want to raise the issue of a particular group of pensioners and members of a pension scheme, many of whom are in my constituency and many of whom are in the Taoiseach's constituency. A number of these people are in the Public Gallery today, having taken the day off from their work to be here.

When the Taoiseach was the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, he brought in the State Airports (Shannon Group) Act 2014. As a result of the unique powers given to the trustee by this legislation, the pension scheme of thousands of workers in Aer Lingus, the Dublin Airport Authority and the Shannon Airport Authority was changed dramatically with effect from January 2015. The accrued benefit of active and deferred members has been frozen. It will never increase in the future. Deferred members saw their entitlements plummeting, devastating the expectations of their living standards in their retirement years. I can tell the Taoiseach that these people are not celebrating the €5 pension increase yesterday.

Almost exactly one year ago to the day, when the Taoiseach was the Minister for Social Protection, I brought to his attention the situation of an associated pension scheme, the second Aer Lingus supplementary scheme, involving some of the same people. That scheme was linked to the Irish airlines (general employees) superannuation scheme, IASS, with the discretionary benefits objective to potentially provide for indexation of the IASS, which was closed at the same time. I brought it to the Minister's attention that this fund of €108 million belonging to 2,500 people was sitting there in cash while the trustees took siphons to spend hundreds of thousands of euro on professional fees. That scheme is now being wound up, the Minister is now the Taoiseach and at this stage the people involved urgently need his help.

The pension operated for eight years between 2007 and 2014. Workers paid in 2% of their salary, the company paid in 4% and €34 million was put in to kick-start it. The expectation was always that members of the fund would get back their contributions and any surplus divided on a fair basis. Instead, a method of distribution has been unilaterally decided upon by the trustee. This has caused absolute uproar. I will give some examples. A woman who is 45 years old paid in €10,500. She is being allocated €12,400. A 53 year old man paid in €14,200 and he will get €17,100. A 59 year old woman who paid in €22,800 will get €62,300. A man, who is one year older, who paid in €100 more will get back €23,700 more. This type of allocation method is completely unacceptable to members whose money has been allocated in such an unfair manner, and placed into a pension scheme over which they have been given no option.

My question to the Taoiseach is really quite simple. Will he contact the trustee and the advisers to ask them to listen to the scheme members and to have the funds of the scheme allocated in a fair manner before it is too late?

I thank the Deputy. I do not believe anyone in this House wants to see a situation where people do not receive the pension they had expected. I know that this has happened to a lot of people across the State, and not just in this particular scheme. It has also happened across the private sector where pension schemes have had to reduce the promised benefits because there just was not enough money in the pot.

One of the things we have is the State pension. The State pension is provided by the State and is a guaranteed income floor for everybody. As the Deputy has acknowledged, it has increased again for the third year in a row ahead of the rate of inflation. I accept that it is a small increase but it is the third year in a row that we have had an increase that is greater than the rate of inflation and the rise in the cost of living. I sincerely hope that we can continue to do that in the years ahead.

With regard to private sector, occupational or semi-State funds it works quite simply; money is paid in to the fund by the employees, money is paid in to the fund by the employers and when people retire, pensions are paid out of that. Of course, the amount that is paid in to the fund - and depending on how the fund is managed also - has to match the benefits. Many of these funds were set up in the 1970s when projections about life expectancy were very different to what they are now. In the 1970s the average life expectancy was 68 years for a man and for a woman it was a bit older. We have found that with a lot of occupational schemes the amounts paid in by employees and employers were not enough to match the promises made at the time. This has resulted in reduced benefits for many people. It is regrettable but I do not see any way of resolving it because it would not be fair on those people who do not have an occupational pension to be asked to fill that gap. I know that the Deputy is not asking for that.

The Deputy made reference to a second pension fund and I do remember she had raised it with me at the time and that she had spoken to my officials about it. If we can we will help but what can be done is quite limited because we must act within the law. This applies to me and to the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty also. The Deputy is aware that the Minister, Deputy Doherty is bringing the Social Welfare, Pensions and Civil Registration Bill 2017 through the House at the moment and that Bill is designed to strengthen the authority of the Pensions Authority when it comes to the wind-up of pension funds to ensure that people are properly treated.

All of the problems the Taoiseach identified at the start of his response really have nothing to do with the issues I raised in this context.

The pot that is there now has money in it to be distributed. The problem is the failure of the Department of Employment and Social Protection to take on the unfettered power of trustees in pension schemes which has resulted in this trustee deciding, against the wishes of the vast majority of the members of that scheme, to allocate, in a completely unfair manner, the moneys into a different pension scheme over which the members have no say. The trustee is the Irish Pensions Trust, which is owned by Mercer, the winding up administrator is Mercer and the scheme actuary is Mercer. The scheme lost €2 million. The funds were sitting there in cash which they bled out of the scheme in the last two years before the winding up. I respect the fact that the Taoiseach cannot intervene, but he can contact the trustee and Mercer and point out that while, legally, they do not have to listen to the members of the scheme because there is no legislation to say so, we are asking them to do so because it is the right and fair thing to do. The method of distribution now is appalling.

I would be happy to arrange for the Deputy, someone from my Department and the Minister for Employment and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, to sit down, go through this and see if there is something we can do. I suspect there is not. The law needs to be changed in this area. Trustees are there to look after the interests of the members and not to look after the interest of the employer or, indeed, the employees. It is the interests of the members of the fund. It is our intention to legislate to give more power to the Pensions Authority in respect of winding up situations like this so that all of the power does not lie with the trustees. It is a change in the law that is required and that is the only thing that will make a difference into the future.