Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Life patterns have changed considerably and we now have many people studying or training until the age of 22 or up to 28 perhaps. We also have people who might take one college course but who then go on to retrain, as primary teachers perhaps. This, again, means that these people may enter the workforce relatively late in life. There are others who go abroad for a period and then come back. One element absent from our current system as it recovers is the facility to allow people to purchase contributions, as is also possible in some pension systems. This might apply where somebody, due to force of circumstance, has missed out on relatively small numbers of contributions. Would the Minister include this in the template? Looking at how life patterns are changing, this facility might be particularly necessary for people who stay in education for a prolonged period of time, which is of course what we want them to do. Under a total contributions approach - which does of course have much in its favour - I believe that we have to include provisions for people, particularly younger people, in this situation. By and large people do not think about pensions in their 20s and 30s. If they have in fact spent a prolonged period in full-time education or in non-remunerated training of some kind, they will not have contributions for this period and will not be entitled to credits. It is necessary that we provide for them.

The Minister also mentioned the self-employed. I do not know if the Minister intends to take this into account but one of the problems here is that we have vast additional numbers of self-employed in the economy at present. What is very obvious is that quite a large number of those self-employed are in fact only designated as such because in order to gain employment they have to agree to identify as self-employed. This applies both to contractors in sectors like construction and IT, who may in some instances be very well-paid, but also to a large number of people in very low-paid jobs. Notwithstanding the Minister's proposal to expand benefits for the self-employed, it will be a long time, if ever, before the system can provide the same level of cover for self-employed people of any category, but particularly those on low incomes, as it does for employees because the employer's contribution of 10.5% does not apply to the self-employed. The Minister should comment on this issue.

My final question concerns the Minister's working group. What is the format of that group? Is it an internal Civil Service working group based on co-operation between the Departments of Finance and Employment and Social Protection, for example? Is it a commission? If so, which groups are likely to be represented on that commission? A commission-type structure would obviously include broad groups of society. I assume that both employers and workers' representatives - such as trade unions - would be part of such a structure because both groups have extensive practical experience of the system. If the working group is entirely drawn from the public service, however, public service experience of PRSI is rather different to that of either employers or employees in the private sector.

If the employers are no longer funding private pensions in the way they used to, those people could be left extremely exposed with their particular interests not being addressed. I would like to know if the Minister will consult with the Dáil on the composition of this working group. It is absolutely essential that it includes people from different kinds of employment and in different types of situation, as well as employers who employ people in different ways and for different times.