Professor John Murphy, the Pension Funds adjudicator, has warned that that he will not make determinations on complaints involving surpluses in pension funds, without clear evidence of the impact of any ruling on the fund and people who may be affected.
The lack of evidence on the impact of decisions regarding surpluses is one of the major challenges Murphy is facing.
Many factors contribute to the existence of a surplus in a retirement fund.
For example, the money invested by the fund might have performed better than expected.
"People come to me and make sweeping statements that they are getting a bad deal, but I must know why the rules are structured in the way they are; what the consequences of restructuring are and so on.
"I am not being given enough evidence on which to base a decision," he says.
Surplus issues, like wage disputes, are good issues to resolve through collective bargaining.
The basic legal principles surrounding the surplus in a fund are in place, Murphy says.
These are that the surplus belongs to the fund and not to the employer; if the surplus is going to be distributed, the trustees of the fund must exercise their discretion reasonably and fairly.
It is also now accepted that your employer has some entitlement to the surplus, although the extent to which the employer is entitled to the surplus is still being debated.
Another controversial issue is the extent to which your employer can take a contribution holiday.
This is when an employer does not pay its contributions to a retirement fund for a period.
Surplus fund issues will probably be settled by negotiation rather than by adjudication, Murphy says.
He says that this may an appropriate way to resolve the problem and has indicated that he is willing to act as negotiator between parties involved in pension fund surplus issues.