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Pensions

Our Pensions Group of specialist pensions lawyers is a market leading pensions practice with a depth of experience and a proven track record.

Our longstanding clients include many of Ireland’s largest pension funds and major employers, plus a range of other stakeholders within the pensions industry, such as consultants, insurers, administrators and professional trustees. We have and continue to support them through the ever-changing regulatory landscape for pensions in Ireland.

Our clients appreciate our pragmatic approach and emphasis on keeping the complex simple. We are consistently ranked in the top tier of specialist pension lawyers by leading directories, including Chambers Europe and Legal 500.

As a full-service law firm, we can draw on our colleagues’ expertise in Tax, Employment, Insurance, Financial Regulation, ESG & Sustainability and other areas.

Ian Devlin

Partner

Ciara McLoughlin

Consultant

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Experience

Our experience includes advising:

We advised the trustees of the John Player Ireland and Imperial Tobacco Mullingar pension schemes on two significant bulk annuity buy-out transactions.
We are the standing legal advisers to Aviva’s Irish staff pension funds providing legal support on all issues relating to the operation of its defined benefit and defined contribution pension funds.
We advised IKEA on various legal issues related to its Irish pension arrangements, including scheme amendments and IORP II related issues.
We are standing legal adviser to the Guinness Ireland Group Pension Scheme, one of the largest pension funds in the State, and provide advice on governance, funding and investment matters and all aspects of regulatory compliance.
We advise the trustees of Marks & Spencer’s defined benefit and defined contribution pension schemes on all aspects of the operation and running of those schemes.
We advised Certa Ireland on the restructuring of various pension arrangements within the wider Certa Ireland group, including advising on the transition to a master trust arrangement.
We acted for Brennan Insurances in advising on various issues related to the restructuring of its defined benefit pension scheme.
We act as standing leading adviser on Irish pensions law matters for a number of large cross-border pension schemes in the pharma sector domiciled in Belgium.
We have advised various master trust trustees on issues related to contractual arrangements with their founders.

Areas of Expertise

We provide both general and project specific pensions advice, including advice related to:

scheme restructurings, wind ups, mergers and bulk annuity buy-out transactions;
all aspects of scheme governance issues related to IORP II;
master trust transition from negotiating contractual terms with master trust providers to dealing with the wind up and transition process;
SRD II, ESG and SFDR and drafting related updates to scheme documents;
PRSA product design and related Pensions Authority approval procedures;
trustee support in contracting with service providers, including investment managers, custodians and administrators;
scheme amendments from day-to-day benefit changes to section 50 benefit reductions; and
pensions disputes and complaints, including complaints before the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, Pensions Authority investigations and pensions litigation before the Courts.