Ms Roma Burke:

I will add a couple of things to fill in some little gaps. There have been a good few questions today on the table in page 132. On the previous page, it states:

The Commission considered it appropriate to review the wider expenditure impacts of changing the pension age rather than just considering the impact on State Pensions’ expenditure [alone], as expenditure on working age payments would increase as a result of an increased pension age.

It goes on to state:

Table 11.4 below sets out the impact of overall pension expenditure (which includes public sector pension and wider social protection payments) of changes to the State Pension age.

That might help with that question.

On Deputy Ó Cathasaigh's comments about looking to 2070, who knows what life will be like then? The further you move out, the more uncertain things become. Nobody three years ago could have predicted what has happened in the last year and a half. It goes to show that things come which are unexpected.

We were mindful of the work the technical subcommittee did. Any findings we thought would be useful to the Pensions Commission were based on looking at 2050. We felt that was a point in time that was definable and which we could see. That is what we focused on and then we said what we think happens if you go out to 2070. Even in the infographic the Pensions Commission produced, the focus is on 2050 because the further you go out, my version of the world might be different from somebody else's version by that point.