Mr. Tim Duggan:

I agree wholeheartedly with the Senator. I am just saying the phenomenon exists and it is a matter we have to tease through when we are examining this.

On the total contributions approach, we are obviously very mindful of the potential disadvantage it could cause for women if it were just effected on a straight pro rata basis. This is because of some of the factors we have mentioned already. I refer to the typical work patterns that many women have experienced over the years. As I stated, norms are changing quite dramatically. To use a horrible word, "millennials" have an entirely different approach from that of 30 or 40 years ago. The breakdown is that approximately 48% of people paying PRSI are women. It is reaching a greater equilibrium, so to speak. Most couples are working now. Certainly, the numbers are going in that direction.

Even after paying for child care, most families are better off with two wages if both partners are in a position to work. That means circumstances in 30 to 40 years will be different from those than pertain now or did pertain. In planning a total contributions approach, because it will be a very long-lived system more than likely, we have to plan it on the basis of what now exists and will exist over the coming years. Equally, we have to try to ascertain what circumstances will look like in 25, 30 or even 50 years. It seems, on the basis of our analysis to date, that this will not be a rigid fix system and that there may be a degree of variability to allow for changes in demographics and people's working patterns that have emerged in recent years. That must be properly reflected when people reach retirement in the decades ahead. That said, it is our current thinking as we try to plan this that a pretty significant allowance for homemaking and caring is likely to feature. We do not see any other way of designing a system like this.

We are keenly awaiting the upcoming actuarial review of the Social Insurance Fund because it will help us enormously in trying to work out costings and approaches that might be appropriate to the envelopes available to us. The Chairman did not use these words but I believe he was wondering what a system like this would look like on a cost-neutral basis. That is precisely one of the points we are trying to tease through at present. The actuarial review is due to kick off shortly. While it will take until well into next year to have it completed, we hope the initial data coming from it will be relevant to this study. In fact, that has been agreed and, therefore, it will be given priority. We hope that, by the middle of 2017, we will be in a position to engage in very serious stakeholder consultations on possible approaches to this. It will obviously include this committee. We will prepare materials for the members in that sense to kick off some of the discussions. Once we have the costings from the actuarial review and some of our own design work done, whereby we can project the costings a bit better, we intend to try to make them available to members in a form that is as easily digested as possible. This stuff is quite confusing and one can get easily bamboozled with columns of figures. We will try our best and then set out what we believe to be the priorities in developing a system of this nature. We have done a lot of work on it already but we are critically dependent on seeing what emerges from the review.

I cannot answer the question directly because we are still going through all the information.