Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Okay. The substantive issue here is to do with a major glitch in the system of pay and pensions that particularly affects women. In the perceived attempt to normalise the contributions in the State pension for women, a measure was introduced in 2012 that would take the average contributions over a woman's working life. I should not just say woman, I should say a person's working life because some men are homemakers, and this is more frequently the case now than in the 1960s and 1970s, but there is a cohort of homemakers who are not being advantaged but are being penalised by the measure brought in during 2012.

When the average number of contributions is calculated over a person's working life, it means that even if they worked 30, 31 or 32 years from the mid-1980s up to 2015-16 when they retired, they will have got a much reduced State pension benefit. I met some women this morning, and the cohort of people - there is one man involved - in contact with us on this issue is growing. If these people started their working lives in the late 1960s or early 1970s, left the workplace to rear their children and be homemakers and then returned to work in the mid-1980s when their families were able to stand on their own two feet, the calculation based on the average contributions figure is pulling their State benefit qualification down to the lowest level. The State contributory pension payment is €230 per week based on the maximum contributions. If the women I met this morning had their pension benefit qualification measured on the contributions they made over the large chunk of their working life, which was the period after they had reared their families from the mid-1980s until recently, they would have gained a contributory pension payment €230 a week. Instead their average contributions were measured over a prolonged period going back to the 1960s or 1970s where, to use the term those women used, they sold their contribution benefits back to the State; they both remember going down to Victoria Street and getting a fiver for the benefits they had paid in. The whole stretch of benefits is averaged over that period, which means that these people are getting a contributory pension payment of €209 per week instead of €230 per week. That shortfall amounts to a considerable amount of money in a year for any family. Many people are affected by this and they have been contacting us.