Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System

The Strawman Proposal was designed to generate discussion on an Automatic Enrolment retirement savings system.

Two-thirds of all private sector employees in this country have no workplace pension and are not saving for their retirement. This means that many of these people will see an unwanted drop in their living standards when they retire.

The proposal is about introducing an Automatic Enrolment retirement savings system into workplaces to address this issue. The object of the proposal was to get the opinions of as many people as possible before we designed such a system.

In line with the ‘Roadmap for Pension Reform 2018 – 2023’, the Government has committed to develop and implement a State sponsored ‘Automatic Enrolment’ supplementary retirement savings system by 2022.

Under Automatic Enrolment, employees without personal retirement savings and who meet certain age and earnings criteria will be automatically enrolled into a State sponsored quality assured supplementary retirement savings system, with freedom of choice to opt-out. The reforms will make it easier for people to access retirement savings options to help them meet their own income expectations for when they retire.

As part of a stakeholder consultation process on the new scheme, a ‘Strawman Proposal for an Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System’ was published in August 2018. This set out a detailed draft design for an Automatic Enrolment system. A plain English version of the Strawman was also produced. The consultation process ended in March 2019. Since then, the results of the consultation process have assisted with further developing the design of the Automatic Enrolment system.

A Strawman Public Consultation Process for an Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System for Ireland

A summary of the Automatic Enrolment (AE) proposal for employees into a retirement savings system in Plain English

Overview of findings from the Strawman Public Consultation Process for an Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System for Ireland

Findings of the Written Submissions

Summary of Findings of the Consultation Seminars

Summary of Findings of the Online Surveys

Findings of the Automatic Enrolment Focus Group Meetings

Automatic Enrolment Update and Next Steps

ESRI - ESRI Working Paper No, 640, October 2019 - A micro-macro Economic analysis of pension auto- enrolment options

Summary of progress in the Design of an Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System for Ireland and next steps - October 2019

Automatic Enrolment Strawman Submissions

To view the consultation click the button below.