Ms Josephine Feehily:

I can only repeat that the evidence put to us was that there was a growing desire to continue working among older people and those coming up to pension age, balanced by some among whom there was no such desire. As I said, we therefore came up with a range of options. Without diverting and digging deeply into this report, I am not certain how many of the likely other benefits were netted out. A model was done for us by the secretariat of the Department which certainly took account of the better retirement benefit that was invented. Unless Mr. Flynn can help me, I would have to go digging to see how much the likelihood of benefits was factored in and that would delay the committee.