Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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427. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to provide her response to a campaign (details supplied) which is calling on the Government to honour its commitment to a State pension rate of at least 34% of average earnings. [29845/23]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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As part of the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025, Government committed to finalising an approach for the benchmarking and indexation of pension payments.

Last September, I announced a series of landmark reforms to the State Pension system. The measures are in response to the recommendations from the Commission on Pensions and represent the biggest ever structural reform of the Irish State Pension system.

As part of this, in line with the recommendations of the Pensions Commission, a smoothed earnings method to calculating a benchmarked/indexed rate of State Pension payments will be introduced as an input to the annual budget process and will be submitted to Government in September each year, commencing this year.

It references published CSO earnings statistics – calculating 34% of average earnings (excluding irregular earnings and overtime) and referencing the Harmonised Indices of Consumer Prices (HICP) to calculate a price adjusted rate.