Marie Moloney (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have raised this issue before and I know people will say I am sounding like a broken record. However, we are still paying a lot of money in pensions to people living in other countries. If someone worked here for five years, they do not even reach the minimum requirement in this country to get a pension. If they work here for five years and then go to work in England, the US or another country with which we have a bilateral agreement and pay all their contributions in those countries, when they reach pension age, Ireland will then calculate a pension based on their work in Ireland and the work they did in other countries. Why can we not pay an amount based on the work they did in this country because it is the other countries to which these people have contributed and we are supplementing their pensions from these countries? Somebody living and working in England will get a British pension and a pro-rata Irish pension. We are paying a lot of money out of the country through this method. I know Dr. Quinn will tell me it relates to European rules, but the US, for example, is not Europe. Why not have a European pension for people that would take what they paid in Ireland, England or France and put it all together in one pension for people working in different countries because each country is paying a pension separately? It does not make sense that we are paying that much money out of the country while people in this country are not getting it.