Tynwald members unanimously voted to approve the establishment of a voluntary defined contribution pension scheme by December 31. 2020.

The island’s public sector pensions required £23.4m to plug the gap between contributions and expenditure in 2017/18 which will rise to £72m in 2035/36.

The motion was brought forward by Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas, who had set out a series of options including the introduction of the voluntary scheme.

An amendment from Bill Shimmins (Middle, pictured), that would have closed the current unfunded scheme to all new members who would be placed automatically on the defined contribution scheme, failed to gain the necessary support.

However, Lawrie Hooper’s (Liberal Vannin, Ramsey) amendment, which sought to explore ways to move people onto the defined contribution scheme, was added to the final motion which members supported.

Mr Thomas began by repeating his warning to members that there was no ’silver bullet’ to slay the public sector pensions beast.

Mr Thomas has long been at the heart of exploring, with the Treasury, options to solve the pensions black hole.

The six options have included the introduction of a voluntary defined contribution scheme, capping benefits of higher paid workers, moving the normal pension age to be the same as the state pension, borrowing the money, moving to career average valued earnings and a defined scheme for future pensions.

He said: ’Our mutual task has been to consider whether any of these options would act to control the legacy funding gap.’

Mr Thomas told members ’we’re on a pathway with cliffs not too far away and we have to be careful’ in finding a workable solution to the funding gap.

In his ultimately doomed bid to seek support for his amendment, Mr Shimmins said that it would ’tackle this difficult problem’ and called it ’the biggest financial risk the island faces’.

He noted that ’defined contribution systems are in deficit across the world’ and the ’tried and tested’ way to fix them ’is to close them’.

Mr Shimmins added: ’There is little to be gained by looking backwards on what may have been done. But the good news is, if we take decisive action now, we can fix this problem.’

He also praised Mr Thomas’ plan as ’innovative’ but added it was ’untried and untested’.

However, members did not back Mr Shimmins’ amendment, defeating it by four votes to 16 in the Keys and three votes to six in the Legislative Council.

Both Mr Hooper’s amendment and Mr Thomas’ motion were approved unanimously.