I am 51. €75K mortgage on home. Have another €700 K of investment property debt. Investment properties are worthless. Have €500K in pension. Six children still in school. Spouse and I are working. For the last 6 years every euro not spent on household goes on servicing debt. We feel we cannot keep this up for another 20 years. Could I utilise the pension fund in some way ? I am not too worried about not having a pension because when we retire we would both have contributory pensions of €230 per week and that seems fantastically huge when compared to today when we have nothing. Also I am assuming that the pension fund will be eaten up by the pension industry so I want to get something from it now.