The value of the Government's 'rainy day' pension fund fell by 10.5% in the first three months of 2008, while CSO figures show demand for that fund will rise.
The National Pensions Reserve Fund was set-up to supplement future pension obligations for civil servants and people on social welfare beyond the year 2025.
The fund's value at the end of March was just under €19.4bn, although fund managers say it has since recovered and gained 4.5% so far in April.
The fund ended 2007 with a 3.3% increase despite stock market volatility in the second half of the year.
The fund's commodities investments also performed strongly, but bonds were flat.
1% of the Government's output goes into this fund.
Growing Older
New figures today from the Central Statistics Office suggest the number of people over age 65 will triple by 2041, putting greater demand on pension obligations.
The CSO also projected that Ireland's population will be 4.9m by 2041, assuming net migration remains at zero and fertility declines.
However, CSO research says if recent trends continue, Ireland's population could reach 5m by 2014.
The study, Population and Labour Force Projections 2011-2041, offers projections based on a number of contrasting scenarios relating to future trends in fertility, mortality and migration over the period. Migration assumptions, it says, are the most important of these.
Irrespective of the assumptions, the number of people over the age of 65 will likely reach 1.4m by 2041.
At that point, up to a quarter of the population will be over 65, compared to 11% in 2006. The number of people aged over 80 will quadruple to 440,000 in the same period.
The CSO predicts that the population of 5-12 year olds will rise by at least 10% in the next decade, based on the assumption of zero migration and falling fertility rates. But if migration rates remain high, and fertility rates remains the same, the increase would be 44% by 2025.
On labour force growth, the CSO says the number of people of working age will only increase by 0.4% between now and 2021. It also projects that the actual labour force will grow by 13,000 a year in the same period. This compares with an annual increase of 61,000 between 1996 and 2006.
