Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

To answer the Deputy, we anticipate that and the CSO gives us the figures, so it is not a surprise. We know about it and we factor it into the base. In other words, to use the Deputy's example, if we are catering this year for 400,000 pensions and we know there will be an increase to 415,000 pensioners, we factor that into the baseline Estimates of the Department. However - this is the issue to which the Deputy is referring - the consequence of that is that there is an automatic driver, as the increase in the numbers increases the expenditure. If somebody looked only at the expenditure, he or she would notice that the expenditure on pensions is going up a great deal, but the driver of that is that the number of people qualifying to claim a pension is increasing and, quite correctly, we factor that into the Department's base. We probably do not get as much credit for absorbing this as we ought to get when people are debating the social welfare system, but it is important that we absorb it so that somebody coming to retirement age can be confident that he or she will get his or her retirement pension.