Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I have one or two points on Mr. Duggan's presentation. The intention, as he has reiterated, is to have this in place for payments by the first quarter of 2019. He has told us the letters will go out towards the end of the year, and approximately 51,000 letters are to go out, and payments, including arrears, will start from March 2019. Is Mr. Duggan confident of achieving the objective of this being in place by the first quarter of 2019? A total of 51,000 individual cases must be looked at and processed. I got the initial impression from the Minister that the letters would be going out much sooner, but it looks like they will not be going out until towards the end of the year.

Mr. Duggan said the homemakers credit will be paid up to a potential maximum of 20 years and that those on social welfare could claim other credits of ten years. Let us assume somebody has more than 20 years between both. Is the maximum for both 20 years or is the 20 years confined to homemakers credit?

Ms Joyce referred to the great deal of angst about the change from 260 contributions to 520 contributions for a basic qualification. Are there any plans to look at this? The statements emanating from the Department and from interviews the Minister has given indicate it is not up for discussion. Could we find out what exactly the position is on this?

What has been said on auto-enrolment indicates the Department is up for discussion on consideration as to how exactly it will be implemented, by which I mean whether it will be done separately by the State or farmed out to some of the private pension providers. I am not opting for one or the other; but note that according to friends in the UK, when the auto-enrolment system there was set up, the initial cost of establishing it and developing all of the technology was pretty horrendous and a multiple of what was anticipated. I suspect if that is the case here - as a smaller country, proportionally the costs could be even higher - ultimately, the pensioners will be those who will pay for it.