Mr. Tim Duggan:

I will take the Chairman's last question first. To implement the pension age increase on a quarterly basis would require system changes, but it is doable. We have quite a bit of time to implement it, if the commission's recommendation is accepted and implemented by the Government. I do not think it would be a showstopper.

I do not have figures to hand regarding the benefit payment for 65-year-olds, but the yearly expenditure on that is in the region of €35 million to €40 million, based on the number of people who seem to qualify for it, or are applying for it, at this juncture.

On the €221 million likely increasing to €275 million, remember the latter is a projection rather than an actual figure and it is impossible to be definitive about projections. The best we can do is estimate based on previous understandings and likely behaviours. The Department almost always errs on the side of a conservative estimate when projecting because it does not want to overstate the nature of problems. Consequently, even though there have been, tragically, deaths from Covid, it is still the case that people are living much longer and healthier lives. That dynamic, which is changing quite rapidly and has done so over the past ten years, coupled with some budget increases, such as the living alone allowance and matters of that nature, means that our projections may have been a little out and a little conservative. Consequently, the actual costs being realised are a little higher than we expected. That is because it is incredibly difficult to predict what the numbers will be over the full year and, at the time we made the projection, we did not know of some of those budgetary increases. That explains the difference.