John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for their presentations. I am taken by the fact that, when we listen to the range of presentations, two things come across very clearly. There is where we see a pension scheme in the future, be it a remodelled total contribution pension scheme or otherwise, and where we find ourselves today and what are the short-term incremental steps that could be made which would have a positive impact. The delegates might reflect on those aspects in their answers because some of them were quite specific today. For example, the delegates spoke about increasing the age to 67. There were certain things that could be done irrespective of having a re-defined or re-modelled pension system. We need to be conscious of where we are today and what is coming down the road in a few months. It is true that the Department and the Minister are working on a total contributions system but the scheme has not been made available to us as a committee yet. Nor has it been published and it will take several years to be implemented. There is merit to everything that the delegates have raised including the transition, the incremental steps and the immediate steps, but for obvious reasons they cannot all be done in one go. However, some of them may be more short term and immediate and may have impact.

In particular, with regard to the triple lock, the delegates spoke about a 2.5% minimum increase or an index that could vary. I think that index is crucial because the needs of older people are different to others. They may have higher medical and heating costs etc. As that population grows, it may be that the CSO should be producing a specific index relative to the needs of those people to ensure that the objective we are setting is realised.

Apart from longer-term policy, in which we recognise the deficits, I ask the witnesses to focus on the incremental steps that should be taken as a priority this year or next year.