Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Gaynor. I thank him for all the work he has put into this issue. It is clear that he has put a great deal of thought into it. Any citizen who makes such an effort has to be commended. He has hit the nail on the head with regard to two aspects of this matter about which something needs to be done. First, if the State is saying it will not pay the State pension until people reach a certain age, they should certainly be entitled to work until they reach that age. Second, a person in these circumstances who is not getting a pension and is not working should receive a standard social welfare payment. It is wrong to expect people who are retiring for reasons beyond their control to sign on as if they were jobseekers when it is clear that they are not. They are two very important principles.

I wish to ask Mr. Gaynor a question about something that has struck me on the basis of my reading of this issue. The pension received by a civil servant is distinct from the State pension. The pension that a private employee gets from paying into his or her pension fund is distinct from the State pension. They are two separate things. There are people working for private employers in defined benefit schemes whose retirement age is 65 and whose pensions will pay out at that age. Their pensions are unaffected by the decision to raise the State pension age. They will still get their full pensions at the age of 65. In many ways, the public and private sectors are not that different in this regard. The pension entitlements of a public servant who has been paying into the system for 40 years are the subject of a contract between that public servant and the State. That happens in the private sector as well. It is not necessarily true to say that private sector workers are the only workers who are affected by the decision to raise the retirement age. There are people in the private sector who have pensions that are not affected by the decision to raise the pension age. It is something that has occurred to me. I wonder if Mr. Gaynor could comment on that. Does that point change Mr. Gaynor's analysis a little, given that much of it involved a comparison between the private and public sectors? I do not think that distinction has been drawn clearly in his analysis. A person who worked in the public sector for five years before leaving it to work in the private sector will get a small portion of a public sector pension.