Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No. Ireland has a social insurance system and its basis is that one pays into it when one is of working age. We are moving to a system under which everybody will pay PRSI on all of their income. We are expanding the PRSI base. However, because there are so many unemployed there are very large claims on the Social Insurance Fund. Second, the country has a demographic bonus which, in many ways, would be the envy of countries such as Germany. We have many families with children and many older people are living longer. From a social insurance or social welfare point of view, we must boost the Social Insurance Fund in order that we can meet the claims arising from that demographic bonus. Many countries in Europe have populations that are shrinking rather than expanding. Despite our economic difficulties, our population is expanding. Pension and retirement payments for older people being such a large proportion of social protection expenditure is one of the reasons it is essential to ensure the contributions to social protection funds, PRSI, are sufficient to fund people's expectations in respect of contributory and non-contributory pensions. In the future, as we will have more retired persons compared to the number of persons of working age, we will have to ensure not only people are covered for the contributory pension but also that they contribute enough for this to happen in order that we can fill the gap.