Mr. Gerard Scully:

The non-contributory pension is a social safety net. The Chairman mentioned people who are self-employed and other categories of people who do not qualify for a State pension. For people who want to make voluntary contributions, the problem with the 2012 changes was that people were told up to three or four months before they retired that they were safe and had made enough contributions, but then they fell off the cliff so to speak. They were not warned. They were not advised when they still in employment that they were still in the system and, thus, could make voluntary contributions to improve their record of voluntary contributions. The offer was not given to people and it has not been offered since because people are still falling off the cliff edge.

People are still ringing Age Action to tell us that they have just realised that they will not get a full pension although they thought they had made sufficient contributions and were told eight or ten years ago that enough contributions had been made. Nobody has ever gone to those people to tell them that they needed to make voluntary contributions in order to avoid the cliff edge. We either need to suspend the changes introduced in 2012 or start being fair with people and start an education campaign to tell people, if they are in work, to check their contributions and begin making voluntary contributions if needed so they can avoid the cliff edge.