Dr. Laura Bambrick:

I will start with the Senator's last point and work backwards. The Senator referred to the total contributions, the move from yearly averaging to the total contributions method. While we thought the original proposal was that 30 qualifying years would be required, we are now looking at 40 qualifying years. Let me remind members that total contributions is due to come into effect in January 2020. We are talking about it taking effect in eight months' time. We have seen very little progress in that. If that is going to be the new movement, people will have to be informed and know the situation. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has already received messages from people who are nearing retirement and want to know what number of contribution years they will require. As for those with DB pensions, we think the real difficulty is in the move to the qualifying age with the pension, where in 2021, that is, in 18 months' time people will have to wait until they are 67 years to qualify for the pension. Arguably anybody who has a defined benefit, DB, pension and is nearing retirement, will be able to start drawing it down from 65 years, if not earlier. Those pensioners with DB pensions are possibly in the best of the worst-case scenario in that they will have their DB pension to bridge the time between their retirement and the State pension coming into effect. We would argue that it is the qualifying age is causing the most difficulty for people, rather than the qualifying years of contributions. People have now had to bridge an extra year, where they might not have a supplementary pension to help them and in 18 months' time, it will be a gap of two years. With the total contributions approach, we are very surprised that we have not had clarity to date on that so that we would be expecting clarity very soon.