PRSA & Pension Issue

[Banana Man]

Hello,
I have a PRSA with Irish life for more than 4 years. I ceased employment earlier this year with that company at which time I suspended contributions into the PRSA, the value of the PRSA is approx. €12,500.
I started a new job and my new company have a pension plan, a defined Benefits Plan where they contribute approx 6% in addition to my 4% of gross salary.
Based on their advice I have a few options:
1) Continue to pay into my PRSA, apply to claim the tax relief and also contribute through payroll towards the company pension, providing the combined value to both pensions contribution do not exceed 20% of my gross salary.
2) Transfer the value of my PRSA into the company pension as an AVC, then continue with the company pension only.
3) Leave the PRSA sitting for the next 25years at €12,500 and receive the benefit on my retirement.

My plan is to start the company pension now.
I need to decide what to do with my PRSA.

A concern is, if after investing my PRSA value as an AVC into the company pension and I change jobs/become redundant, etc, what will my options be?

Opinions are welcome.

Thanks for reading

 

[oysterman]

Would you get defined benefits for the transferred €12.5k? If so, it's tempting.

What about the solvency of the scheme you're joining? Do you want to put all of your eggs in one basket? I, for one, would be very reluctant to make such an act of faith in a single pension vehicle. At last count, I had 4 different sources of (very far future!) pension and that will create an administrative headache for me (or my executors) at some stage in the future but the diversity is reassuring.

Standard response on this site is to advise you to seek professional advice - but you're not talking about a large sum of money here (and I'll bet it's become a hell of a lot smaller in recent weeks) so don't spend too much on it...

And, of course, if you went all-in and left their employment for any reason you'd have a deferred entitlement to benefit on normal retirement age for the scheme.