Ms Josephine Feehily:

I thank the Senator for his remarks about the work. The idea of the four packages is exactly the point he homed in on. We provided options, which is what our terms of reference asked us to do. The Government is entirely free to choose any or none of them. We provided an evidence base for all of the options. Package 3 is entirely on the funding side, with no contribution from the age. The commission is a group of 11 people with a range of views and we formed the closest consensus on package 4. We felt that the age increase makes a significant contribution to solving the challenge. We also had submissions from bodies, including the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, showing there was a large body of people who want to continue at work. As I said, the employment contract issue would not be arising if there were not people who wanted to continue at work. It was not as simple as everybody wanting to retire.

Package 4 emerged from a distillation of all of the inputs. By providing the option for a pension at 65, at the same time as the age is going up, we were finding a levelling in there. Package 4, on the age ground, emerged from a distillation of all of the inputs and addressing the scale of the problem, as well as a desire not to have everything falling on the funding side. The trade union people, and I am sure they would not mind me saying this, would not necessarily have wanted employee PRSI going up either.

I take Senator Gavan's point that the difference between the various packages in the incidence of PRSI is modest, but it does have an impact on the labour market and that was also on the table from various inputs to us. There was not a desire to increase PRSI at the same time as auto-enrolment is coming on, with a potential increase from both employers and employees to their personal pensions and things such as statutory sick pay imposing additional costs. There were many things in the mix in the submissions to us. However, we were particularly driven by the fact there is no fixed view that people should retire at 65 or 66. People were looking for a range and so we put the age piece into package 4 as the optimum mix of interventions to help address the deficit, noting that people with long working lives might get a pension at 65, and as an option for Government.

I take the Senator's point about people having worked in different countries. Modern social security frameworks provide for reciprocation, not just in the European Union, but beyond. People who work in different in countries can end up with two partial pensions or combined insurance records. It is not the sort of fatal hit it used to be many years ago.

There are two answers to the Senator's question on PRSI in other countries. Social security systems are not always directly comparable. In many countries, which I am sure the Senator knows from his own work, some elements of social security are provided through funds, including trade unions. Several contributions can come from a payslip, so pension, unemployment insurance and health insurance can all be quite different. Comparison is quite difficult but it is the case that we are a bit behind the curve on both the employer and employee side. How far we are behind the curve depends on who one looks at for comparisons. As if that was not complicated enough, the benefit range is also a bit different. As a general comment, the Senator is correct. We had a presentation from the OECD and when that question was put to it, the OECD pointed out we were also behind the curve on the employee side. Does that capture the Senator's questions?