Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely. At the end of the day there is a greater reduction in our unemployment figures, which has obviously made some savings. A large chunk of that has however been eaten up by the increase in people of pensionable age. To be clear then: there will be savings at the end of the year but they will go back to central Exchequer funds and will be distributed in accordance with whatever decisions are made within the budget parameters next week. I will be fighting very hard to address the specific issues raised by this committee over the past few months, and which I also hope to hear again today.

The issue of pensions has been raised. As I have said on a number of occasions, this is one of the most contentious issues that arises in my own personal constituency office in County Meath. It is not possible to address the pensions anomaly on a stand-alone basis. Firstly, it would probably take as long to do this as to address the overall reform of pensions, which is what we are currently carrying out towards a total contributions approach. I very much value the fact that this committee agrees with the Department's approach on this. To reverse this and go back to what the Chairman has suggested would in fact cost millions of euro, and that money is not available in the current budget. I am more concerned with fixing the anomaly, which has a very strong voice in our communities, in the context of moving towards a total contributions system as soon as we can. Our ambition is to reach this target by 2020. That is two years away and will not be fast enough for some people. I want, however, to address the entire pensions system by moving it to a fairer and more sustainable model sooner rather than later. We will address any further anomalies in the system at that stage.