There are over 700 defined benefit pension schemes in the State covering more than 100,000 people. These workers thought they had made provision for their retirement but in recent years there have been worrying precedents. The UK has enacted a law to prevent solvent companies from walking away from their obligations to their employees in respect of occupational pension schemes. In October 2017, the Government's Social Welfare, Pensions and Civil Registration Bill was referred to the select committee. Proposals to protect defined benefit schemes were promised in that legislation in response to a number of items of legislation put forward by the Deputies in Opposition. We have been waiting two years for the Minister to bring forward amendments that have been long-promised to protect these pension payers. Tomorrow, the Dáil will debate a Private Members' Bill in the name of Deputy Willie Penrose to achieve the objective I believe there is consensus in the House to achieve. Will the Taoiseach support that Bill?

I thank the Deputy. This is a problem we have been working on for quite some time. We are struggling to come up with a solution, one that I am very familiar with from my time as Minister for Social Protection. There are many defined benefit pension schemes that currently have very large deficits. The solution, as I understand it from Deputy Penrose's Bill, is to make the employer liable for any deficit. There is a real difficulty in that because we could have a company with thousands of employees that is working well and making a profit but if we load on that company a pension deficit of hundreds of millions of euro, it might become insolvent. In trying to protect the pensions of some, therefore, we may cause hundreds of people to become unemployed.

We have a difficulty with the semi-State organisations as well. Quite a number of them have very large deficits and if those deficits are put on the balance sheets of those companies, they would have to curtail their investment plans. That would include companies like ESB, for example, and if ESB cannot invest in the energy network and renewable energy, we have some serious problems. While I believe the Bill is well-intentioned, the unintended consequences could be very serious in terms of closing down businesses, job losses and us having to curtail our infrastructure plans. I ask the Deputy's party to reflect on that.

I believe there is a way of achieving both objectives. It is not to make companies insolvent but to protect people by ensuring that solvent companies do not walk away from their obligations.

We do not want to put them in a situation where they have to cancel their capital plans because their balance sheets have changed.

That is not an excuse to abolish all defined benefit schemes.

It is not, but it is a complicated matter.