Investment Fund closed now - options available

[rogeroleary]

I had around 90k from a previous employers pension fund and about 7-8 years ago put this into a Geared Property fund - not one of my better ideas!

Last valuation was around 35-40k and I just received a letter saying the fund has been wound up and monies returned to Irish Life where is will reside in a pension cash fund. My options are as foillows:

1. transfer to another fund within Irish Life
2. transfer to another pension provider to access different pension funds
3. consolidate with other pensions I might have (they say this could reduce retirement options and reduce potential tax free lump sum on retirement)
4. Access the fund by retiring it (I am 55 year of age) but I would "need to consider carefully the balance between the tax free lump sum and what I do with any balance of pension fund ARF or Annuity"

I really am not familiar with options / consequences on options 3 and 4 so if anyone could share some advice that would be much appreciated.

I guess I would like to access the funds now (to clear a tracker mortgage) but don't want to do anything that would seriously negate my existing employers pension scheme - which I would hope to trigger in about 5 years time.

Any advice would be very much appreciated,

Roger