Mr. Henry Gaynor:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee, as well as members of the public who may be listening. I presume members have already read the detail of my submission so I will give a brief overview of it. The Government is concerned about increased life expectancy and an increased length of time spent in retirement, along with a difficulty we may have funding State pensions. The Government has begun a series of reforms, including the raising of the State pension age to 66 and beyond from the beginning of last year. Not everyone is being treated equally.

I am comparing what is happening in the private sector with the public sector but I am not against the public sector. I am merely comparing how the two sectors are being treated differently. Before proceeding I will tell a story about a friend of mine who is retiring from his work next month. He has worked for 51 years since he was 14 but he will not get a State pension for the first year of his retirement. He must sign on and we hope he will get his stamps. He was born in 1950 and began working in 1964. We can compare this to a public servant who began before 1995. When that person has completed 40 years of work, he or she is entitled to a full pension. A public representative like the committee members elected before 2004 is entitled to a full pension after 20 years when the person turns 50. My colleague has worked for 51 years. The dates of 1995 and 2004 are cut-off points in the public sector but one could call his cut-off date 1963. That is a massive gap. The Government is using dates of birth to decide when a private sector worker is cut off from a pension but it is using a date of work termination for a public sector worker. I do not see why the public sector cannot have this as the relevant date.

In her submission to a committee on 2 October 2013, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, revealed that because of our increasing life expectancy, men are now living to an average age of 82, with women living to an average age of 85. From this we can work out that if an elected representative retired at 50 on a full pension, he or she would draw a pension for 32 years. A public servant retiring at 60 would draw a pension for 22 years but a private sector worker would only draw a pension for 14 to 16 years, depending on age. The private sector worker would be expected to work longer and have a lower life expectancy, meaning his or her time drawing a pension would be smaller again. The Minister referred to an OECD report on the pension system and in its view, the State is moving very fast against the private sector compared with the public sector. It has noticed the private sector is being treated differently.

In Kerry we have been campaigning for the past three years against these proposed changes. We have even been lobbying Deputies. The Minister, Deputy Burton, seems to believe the problem is we will be in retirement for too long and she wants to shorten that period. Data from the Central Statistics Office indicate that a person's job has an effect on life expectancy. If the Minister wishes to reduce the amount of time people spend in retirement, she should consider a person's job and work out the life expectancy, with retirement age being extrapolated from that. The Minister has used the financial crisis as an excuse for changes to the pension.

I am speaking for most of my colleagues when I say that none of us got involved in the madness of the Celtic tiger. We feel very hard done by to be blamed and punished for what happened to the banking system. We also note that those who were involved in the running and supervision of the banks managed to get away with their giant pensions. No one seems to have done anything about it.

In her submission, the Tánaiste suggested that by 2050, we will not have enough people of working age to fund people in retirement. To me, it is not correct to use the statistics for people of working age. There are approximately 3 million people of working age in Ireland. The CSO defines "working age" as between the ages of 15 and 64. Many people in that age bracket are not paying tax because they are going to school or college or are home-makers or carers. The Tánaiste should be comparing the number of people who are working with the number of retired people. Such a comparison reveals that in the private sector there are approximately 3.2 people working for every retired person, whereas in the public sector there are approximately 1.9 people working for every retired person. The problem is more in the public sector than in the private sector. Having said that, I have nothing against the public sector.

The Government has let us down badly. Governments are elected to govern us in a fair and objective manner. In our view, its pension reforms can be regarded as anything but objective. We feel that if reforms are necessary, all the parties involved should be brought together and a deal should be hammered out. Why not have the same cut-off date for everyone? Something like that would make it fairer. I look forward to any questions that the members of the committee might have.