The National Pensions Summit 2025, sponsored by Arthur Cox, took place in Croke Park on 30 January 2025. The Summit is a leading forum in the Irish pensions industry, bringing together Irish pensions professionals for insights into the future of pensions and to discuss how to drive better outcomes for members. The theme of the 2025 event was “Cutting Through the Noise: Pension Attention in a Disrupted World”.  

At the Summit, Sarah McCague and Daniel Watters, Partners in our Pensions and Employee Benefits Group, took part in a session with broadcaster Claire Brock on “Your pension legislation cheat sheet: key things to know for 2025”. The session provided a brief overview of the main legal developments likely to affect pension schemes in 2025 and how trustees and employers can prepare. 

Sarah McCague was firstly asked about the implementation of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (“DORA”) and its impact on pension schemes. Sarah explained that DORA is an EU regulation primarily focused on strengthening ICT security for large financial institutions, but which also includes pension schemes within its scope. Responsibility for pension schemes’ compliance with DORA lies with scheme trustees. The implementation date for DORA was 17 January 2025 and the Pensions Authority is expecting trustees to be working towards compliance.  

Pictured, left to right: Daniel Watters, Sarah McCague and Claire Brock, in conversation. Photograph: Business Post

Daniel Watters explained that the Arthur Cox Pensions and Employee Benefits Group have been helping trustees to put in place a roadmap to DORA compliance. A key outstanding question for trustees is which of their third-party service providers are caught by DORA, such that enhanced scrutiny of such providers and additional contractual terms are required in respect of them. This remains an area of uncertainty and trustees are advised to monitor the situation as further guidance is issued by regulators at both a European and national level over the coming months. 

The second topic discussed by the panel was the introduction of pensions automatic enrolment in Ireland, which is expected to take effect from 30 September 2025. Sarah McCague recommended that employers should have a plan in place to prepare for automatic enrolment by no later than June 2025, given that a 13-week lookback period applies in the legislation. Cohorts of employees that are likely to require particular consideration include existing employees who have opted-out of pension arrangements, employees in probationary periods, and non-executive directors. Where such employees are caught by automatic enrolment, employers will need to decide whether they wish to compel them to join their existing pension arrangements or to operate a dual system (i.e. continue their existing arrangements alongside the auto-enrolment system).    

The final topic that the panel discussed was retirement ages for employees, given that the age at which employees can first access the State Pension has now settled at 66 while many pension schemes and employees’ contracts are still structured around a retirement age of 65 or lower. Daniel Watters noted that the public sector is ahead of the private sector in this regard, with many public sector employees now having a right to work until age 70. The legality of a mandatory retirement age of 70 in the public sector was confirmed by the Supreme Court in the case of Mallon v Minister for Justice.  

In respect of the private sector, Daniel Watters noted that the general scheme of the Employment (Restriction of Certain Mandatory Retirement Ages) Bill 2024 was published last year and that it remains to be seen if it will reappear on the legislative agenda for the incoming Government. The Bill would allow, but not compel, employees to remain in employment until they can access the State Pension. Irrespective of this potential development, some employers and trustees are already taking steps to facilitate continued employment and active membership of pension schemes up to age 66. 

To discuss any of these topics in more depth, please contact a member of the Arthur Cox Pensions and Employee Benefits Group.