Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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I would be more than willing to provide those figures to the committee. Deputy Twomey is quite right. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, has introduced a new unified pension scheme where career-average earnings rather than 50% of final salary will be used to calculate pensions in future. Not only will new public servants be on lower pay, they will also be in receipt of significantly lower pensions on retirement, which will have a knock-on effect on the State's liability into the future. Radical changes have happened in this area since this Government took office and that is borne out by the new single pension scheme. As the Deputy has also pointed out, there have been significant increases in tax and the USC as well as actual pension reductions, which I will put on the record. Pensions of between €12,000 and €24,000 have been reduced by 6%, those between €24,000 to €60,000 were reduced by 9%, pensions between €60,000 and €100,000 were reduced by 12%, while those over €100,000 have been reduced by 20%. These are radical reductions in pension cover. Furthermore, at least one third of any pension over €60,000 is returned to the State by way of tax. When we talk about a pension of €100,000 it is important to remember that €100,000 is not the take-home figure, as many in this room would know. A lot of change has already occurred and we are not ruling out further changes. The important numbers are the billions, rather than the tens of millions. The important figure is the total amount that has been saved over a three year period and we have further savings to make, without doubt.