The chairman of the Pensions Board, the authority set up to advise the government on retirement savings, has endorsed a "soft mandatory" regime to enforce personal pension provision among the 48% of people who currently are relying solely on the state to fund their retirement.

Speaking in a personal capacity, Tiarnan O'Mahoney told the Sunday Tribune that he would "absolutely favour" automatically enrolling employees in private pensions unless they specifically opt out, "because it gets the job done". Employers would deduct the pension contributions directly from the pay cheque.

Employees can leave, but experience in other countries suggest that few do.

"We have to ask ourselves as a nation: 'are pensions important?', " he said. "If they're not important, well let's stop talking about them.

If they are important, then we must ensure it happens, and some form of mandatory pension is one way of ensuring it does."

He also expressed confidence that, although people might resent being pushed to pay now for their future retirement income, a mandatory regime would eventually be regarded as favourably as compulsory education.

"We took the view on education that everyone had to go to school until they're 16 whether they like it or not.

We said as a nation: 'This is very important and we're going to insist upon it for the good of Ireland and the good of the individual'. When you're 46 you're delighted that you were made go to school."

O'Mahoney, a former Anglo Irish banker who is now the chief executive of the highly profitable bank lending venture ISTC, was appointed by social affairs minister Seamus Brennan in 2006 to the non-executive role on the board for a five-year term, a move seen as an attempt to energise the debate around pensions.

The minister had already said at the time that some form of compulsion would probably be needed if the government were to meet its pensions targets, but a Pensions Board study published in August offered only a lukewarm validation of the concept.