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

I thank Deputy Bríd Smith who is worse than I am. If I had my way, the figure would be 41%, but it is 36%. I will challenge every single year to try to get more in order to be able to do some of the stuff we want to do collectively. Nonetheless, there is a difference between our budget and those of many other European countires. As such, we are not necessarily comparing like with like. The budgets of other European countries include a lot of health and education stuff that we do not deal with in the Department because it comes under other Departments. However, that does not discount the fact that I would like it to be more and the Deputy can count on me asking for more next year.

I hear the Deputy loud and clear on back money for pensioners. Women, in particular, have been coming into all of our offices since the announcement was made. The difficulty I have is that I can only make a change when I bring forward new legislation. I cannot backdate the legislation to 2012 when the law was changed by the Parliament. The new law I am going to bring in will have an effective date of 30 March. I can only bring in a new law and make the changes now. It is not about having a conversation with somebody about where we are going to get the money, rather it is about those who were adjudicated on under the law of the land for the past five or six years. It is only because I am bringing forward new legislation that there will be a change to how they are adjudicated on. I have no means of changing what happened in the past and while that may be difficult to hear, unfortunately, it is the reality, but that is not to say the Deputy will not support people politically and do what she has to do. If she can come up with a solution, that will be deadly, but what I am being told is that I can only bring forward new legislation to effect change, which is what I am doing.