The Irish government on Thursday confirmed the selection of India’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as its preferred partner to build and run the system for its landmark auto-enrolment (AE) pension scheme.
According to The Irish Times, the 10-year contract is valued at up to €150 million.
The official confirmation came a day after both Houses of the Oireachtas passed the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024. It will now be sent to President Michael D. Higgins to be signed into law.
In a release, the Department of Social Protection said: “The Bill provides for a new retirement savings scheme for workers who are not already members of a pension scheme.”
Under the AE scheme, all employees not already in an occupational or equivalent pension scheme, aged between 23 and 60, and earning over €20,000 across all of their employments, will be automatically enrolled.
The first enrolment is set to take place in 2025. Workers and their employers will each initially pay 1.5 per cent of a person’s gross salary into the plan. This will increase to 3 per cent from year four before jumping to 4.5 per cent in year seven and 6 per cent from year 10.
Ireland remains the only country in the OECD that does not operate AE or a similar system to promote pension savings.
TCS has been the pensions administration provider for NEST, the UK government’s equivalent of the AE scheme, since 2011. TCS has a presence in Ireland’s Letterkenny where it employs 1,400 people.