Today's Irish Times' article title "State faces challenge on pensions" is a euphemism when one analyses the figures. The facts below were supplied to the Irish Times by the Department of Finance (my brief analysis in brackets):

[]"...public pensions liability is €75 billion,including 300,000 public sector workers and 95,000 public sector pensioners." (That's about €18,750 liability a head for the Irish nation or maybe €66,000 per family of 3.5).

[]The annual pensions for the latter 95,000 pensioners total €2.5 billion,1.5% of GDP.(That's an average pension of €26,000 a year,very generous compared to the average industrial wage of about €32,000. Go for that permanent,pensionable job,kid!)

[]Social welfare pensions will treble by 2050,to about €12 billion in today's money.

[]More than 450,000 people now receive a state or a widow/widowers pension. [Today's pensions are about a third of the abovementioned €12 billion = €4 billion,about 2.4% of GNP. Per pensioner, €4 billion/450,000 pensioners= €8,889 each. I'm assuming,possibly wrongly,that public sector pensions are not included in the €4 billion.]

[]The percentage of GDP allocated to pensions is set to approximately double in 30 years. [The 1.5% plus 2.4% above total 3.9%,which percentage is set to double to about 7.8% of GDP. Politicians are fond of GDP when it suits them because it overstates the size of the Irish economy by about 15% thanks to multinational company financial transfers.The 3.9% and 7.8% look more burdensome when converted to percentages of GNP, at about 4.5% and 9.0% respectively.]

[]"The ratio of people of working age in both the public and private sectors to those over 65 is expected to fall from six to one to approximately two to one by 2050."

The latter point suggests that a pensions burden of 9.0% of GNP in 2038 is a massive understatement. In 2050,only 12 years later, for every twelve workers ,two in the public sector,there will be six pensioners. Using today's incomes, a rough estimate of the figures would be:

10 private sector workers x average industrial wage and benefits of 35,000 = €350,000
2 public sector worker x €47,000 = €94,000
5 private sector pensioners x €12,000 = 60,000
1 public sector pensioner x €26,000

Total wages 350,00 + 94,000 = €444,000
Total pensions 60,000 + 26,000 = €86,000

The ratio of pensions to wages is 86,000/444,000 = 19.4%. Taxes will have to be huge to pay for this,a throwback to the post World War Two era of punitive tax rates of over 70%.

Will the two overtaxed workers expected to support one pensioner bother to stay around? If they don't,the economy will become stagnant. An American politician joked that the grandchildren can pay off the national debt and future pensions,but ther are limits to taxation.

Obviously,something will have to give. Future governments will stop increasing pensions and raise pensionable ages drastically,though probably too late to head off an economic crisis.