The IAPF has the most modest . . . and realistic . . . proposal to paddle the state out of the rough waters ahead: the sectorwide mandatory pension. The idea is to first target industries with especially low coverage . . . like services and retail . . . to make the biggest income at the bottom without creating adverse effects in sectors where pension coverage is already good, like financial services.

Their model is the Construction Worker's Pension Scheme, Ireland's only sectorwide mandatory pension programme. The only problem is the scheme isn't quite doing the business it should . . . at least from the point of view of Building and Allied Trades' Union.

"It's a great scheme on paper, " says Batu deputy general secretary Dennis Farrell. "But 'mandatory' means being forced or coerced into it by unions or the Labour Court."

Farrell claims that resistance by employers to the scheme has kept participation rates as low as 93,000 workers out of 280,000 eligible workers . . . hardly sectorwide or mandatory at those rates.

Here's how the 1bn CWPS is supposed to work on paper. Each eligible worker gets a contribution of 7% of the average industry salary of 34,780 . . . two-thirds from the employer, one-third from the employee.

This is put into an individual account, which the employee can top up with additional contributions. About 15,000 avail of the opportunity.

Because the CWPS is an industry scheme and not an employer scheme, however, it tracks from one employer to the next. During periods of unemployment, payments stop, the funds are vested, and the employee can make up lost contributions with additional payments later.

"This is particularly useful because construction is a volatile industry; people are moving around much more, " says Pat Ferguson, the CWPS administrator. "But there is no moving of the pension plan and none of the problems associated with moving the pension plan."

This is why the IAPF wants to apply the model to underserved sectors like services and retail, where short-term and seasonal work makes a mockery of the steady-as-she-goes ethos of pension contributions.

Farrell, who complains that many construction firms are reluctant to assist the union to ensure full compliance with the scheme, remains sceptical about the wisdom of applying a theoretical model that has some practical problems.

"The model might be good, but it's not the harmonious story that they're flogging, " he says. "Compliance is still very bad.

Half my work is about getting employers to comply with what is supposed to be a mandatory pension."