Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am looking at Deputy Boyd Barrett. In 25, 30 or 40 years, when it comes to him having access to a pension, to which he has contributed in good faith, which we have to do through the public pension fund, I would like to think that he would get the benefits of it. I would find it difficult to be able to sell to people that, in the future, they are not going to have a pension like there used to be and that they are going to have to take a lesser slice of the action. How is that going to be compensated for? I am using Deputy Boyd Barrett as a guinea pig in this scene but somebody has to be a guinea pig, and we had better take a young fellow. How do we sell this to that age cohort? We are selling to them the idea that they are going to have to take a lot of risk, with spouses, kids, huge mortgages and so on, and, at the end of the day, they cannot look forward to the fruits of their labours turning up in a lump sum payment because we are going to take that away beforehand. How are we going to compensate for that?