Results 1-20 of 79 for pension speaker:Marc Ó Cathasaigh

Written Answers — Department of Health: Medical Cards (8 May 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: 572. To ask the Minister for Health the number of people who lost access to a medical card due to pension increases in the last Budget; his Department's plans to pre-emptively address the issue in Budget 2025; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20506/24]

Select Committee on Social Protection: Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024: Committee Stage (8 May 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ..., munitions or otherwise, but we should be able to see where the money invested on behalf of the people, with some input from the State coffers, is invested. It should be clear to people, and the new pensions body should be required to report on it.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024: Committee Stage (8 May 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...cat. Some of my later amendments go to the idea of divestment, particularly in respect of fossil fuels and the arms industry but amendment No. 13 is another way to skin that cat. Within a private pension I can avail of the option to invest in an ESG-friendly green pension product and in that way choose where to spend my money. That will not be an option with the current wording of the...

Select Committee on Social Protection: Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024: Committee Stage (8 May 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...that. But the basic premise as put forth by the committee during our pre-legislative scrutiny is that we do not want Irish money invested in these things. I do understand the argument that we give tax relief to pension contributions made at the higher level and you get your 40% or whatever else to invest in your private sector pension and we do not have the same level of oversight of...

Select Committee on Social Protection: Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024: Committee Stage (8 May 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...amendments Nos. 16 and 17, if the problem is the line, "shall not invest those resources, directly and indirectly", and this is found to be poorly phrased or placing too much of an onus on the pension managers, then this is one thing but that is not the consequential piece of the amendment. These are two provisions that exist already within our national law. Building on the point made...

Select Committee on Social Protection: Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024: Committee Stage (8 May 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I will again make the point I made at the outset. I do not, at the moment, get to legislate on anything else that is happening in the pensions industry. We are getting an opportunity to look at legislation to do with what will become a substantial part of our pension provision State-wide. I strongly feel that if we are looking at convergence, we should converge upwards and not downwards....

Select Committee on Social Protection: Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024: Committee Stage (8 May 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I move amendment No. 19: In page 55, after line 41, to insert the following: “ “best long term interests” means the highest possible value of the pension, as well as the best possible health of the environment and society in which the participants live;”.

Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024: Second Stage (16 Apr 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I welcome the Bill. It was a key recommendation of the OECD's review of the Irish pension system that we had to increase that supplemental pension coverage. That word "supplemental" is important. Deputy Duncan Smith alluded to it but I do not believe it is within our compass to make any promises about future governments, however. The system is designed to be supplemental and it does not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Social Welfare Statutory Instruments: Department of Social Protection (20 Mar 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...had that rent deducted from their payment. This change will particularly benefit older people who can now receive €269.23 in weekly rent for a room without impacting their non-contributory State pension or the spouse or adult dependant of a contributory pensioner. Due to ongoing delays in applying this relief to the means test for the medical card, which is still not in place as...

Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate: Post Office Closures (7 Mar 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...to providing Irish-language services within Gaeltacht na nDéise. There will be knock-on impacts if these Irish-language services are not provided. If people drive into Abbeyside to get their pensions, for example, first of all, they have to drive to the location itself, which is 6 miles in the car. The Green Party fellow does not want this, for sure. It is possible, however, to...

Report of Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands: Motion (1 Feb 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...we made concerned benchmarking of social welfare rates, whether against the minimum essential standard of living or whatever else. We feel strongly it should be removed from the budgetary cycle of "Are we putting a fiver on the pensions?" We should set a minimum floor whereby people, particularly those on fixed incomes, know the adequacy of their income will be maintained over time. I...

Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Social Insurance Fund 2022
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2022
Chapter 13 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 14 - Ex gratia Payments of €1.4 million to Social Welfare Branch Managers
Chapter 15 - Raising Social Welfare Overpayments
Chapter 16 - Recovery of Welfare Overpayments
Chapter 17 - Actuarial Review of the Social Insurance Fund (18 Jan 2024)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...of how many people are here or have gone back but also of who is here and the breakdown between children, people of working age, people with full-time caring duties and people who might be of a pensionable age.

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Sector Pensions (14 Dec 2023)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...and Reform further to Parliamentary Question No. 208 of 20 September 2023, whether there has been progress in relation to streamlining the process of the payment of public service occupational pension schemes payable to retired public servants, particularly where post '95 members of An Garda Síochána retiring must first exhaust all entitlement under social welfare, and are...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: State Pensions (7 Dec 2023)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: 108. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her Department’s plans for a public awareness campaign to alert long-term carers to changes in their pension provisions under the provision of Social Welfare; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52958/23]

Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2023: Second Stage (23 Nov 2023)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...towards benchmarking as set out in the roadmap for social inclusion. All of us in the House would like to move away from wondering in every budgetary recycle whether there will be a fiver on the pension. It has been a long time since it has been only an extra fiver on core welfare rates over the lifetime of this Government. Particularly for people who are on a fixed income, it is...

Public Accounts Committee: Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 45 - Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science
Financial Statements 2022: National Training Fund
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2022
Chapter 19: National Training Fund (23 Nov 2023)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: I want to ask a quick question on the pension outturn. The Estimate provided €197 million and the outturn was €341 million, which is quite a differential. Of all of the costs that an institution might incur, I would have thought that pension costs would be among the most predictable so why is there such a variation?

Employment (Collective Redundancies and Miscellaneous Provisions) and Companies (Amendment) Bill 2023: Second Stage (15 Nov 2023)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...It might not be directly associated but I think back to the situation in Waterford Crystal. Some workers from it who were made redundant are still seeking what they believe is their entitlement to pension rights from a round of redundancies in the 1980s. I welcome the provisions. I want to take a zoomed-out approach and then make a contribution on a specific aspect of it. We have to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Green Paper on Disability Reform: Department of Social Protection (25 Oct 2023)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: ...this and to have three tiers of payments depending on a person's ability to work. The Green Paper includes proposals on reforming the following income supports: disability allowance, invalidity pension, blind pension, partial capacity benefit and domiciliary care allowance. For those watching the discussion who may wish to contribute to the consultation, the Minister has invited...

Public Accounts Committee: Children’s Health Ireland and National Paediatric Hospital Development Board: Discussion (19 Oct 2023)

Marc Ó Cathasaigh: In the time remaining I will ask a final question that is different in character. I want to focus on this accounting practice for forecasting future pension liabilities that was identified as an issue by the Comptroller and Auditor General. We are told this is done at the direction of the Minister. The material effect of that is to minimise the pension liability. We know there are a...