The Pensions Board, the statutory body regulating pension schemes, is looking at changing the way money is shared out when company pension schemes are wound up.
The board will make a decision next month on whether to recommend changes to the statutory rules for scheme wind-ups - the so-called "priority order" in which people can claim money from a wound-up pension fund.
If it goes ahead, the Pensions Board will submit proposals to the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Ms Coughlan, in the same month.
An announcement on whether these proposals have been accepted will be made in December, with a view to including them in the Social Welfare Bill early next year.
If an employer goes bust and the pension scheme winds up, there may not be enough assets to cover the supposedly guaranteed benefits promised to all the scheme members once the expenses associated with the closure have been paid.
Under the current rules, any additional voluntary contributions (AVCs) made to the scheme are ring-fenced and paid out first.
The pension benefits already being paid to retired members of the scheme must then be secured before benefits can be paid to active or deferred members.
However, Mr Jerry Moriarty, head of investigations and compliance at the Pensions Board, said this did not take into account anomalies. An example would be a 50-year-old who takes early retirement a couple of weeks before the winding up of a scheme receiving prior claim on the pension fund over a 64-year-old still in employment who plans to retire sometime after his or her next birthday.
The British government announced last week that it was considering introducing a sliding scale. Under this, people who have been paying in to a company scheme for many years will be ranked higher than those who have only been paying in for a short time.
Ms Anne Maher, chief executive of the Pensions Board, said that this was one possibility of how the priority order might be changed here.
Another alternative might be to divide it pro rata according to the value of people's contributions.
"That would be the extreme," Ms Maher said.
Changes to the priority order are being discussed as part of the Pension Board's review of the minimum funding standard. This is designed to protect members from insolvent schemes, but is thought to be too stringent a measure by the industry.
The funding rules require that employers have enough funds in their pension scheme to meet all of its liabilities in the event it was wound up at that exact moment. Companies are not allowed rely on long-term investment returns to fund their future liabilities.
About two-thirds of defined-benefit pension schemes are failing to meet this standard, leaving members exposed if their employer was to go bankrupt.
The Pensions Board is also examining the possibility of introducing an insurance fund that would compensate employees who lose out.
