Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Topical Issue matters are incredibly important around here.

I read the submissions and opening statements with interest. I will hone in on a few matters. One is that a vast number of people coming to contributory pension age would not be able to work after 66. In fact, many people retire before they reach 66 and do not get the State pension. That is because their jobs involved physical input. All of our physical abilities diminish with age, and this pension issue relates to a huge spectrum of professions and people. Care workers have been mentioned, which could be care assistants and nurses. All of the people who work in the building trades are definitely affected. There is a wide range of professions beyond that.

One thing that seems to get lost in the debate is contributions. We are talking about 2028. In order to have 40 years' worth of contributions in 2028, a person must have started work in 1988. In such circumstances, one must ask what was work like in 1988, in 1998 and during the Celtic tiger era in all of these industries and not what kind of facilities will somebody who starts work in 2028 have by 2068. I presume and hope they will have much better health and safety and a hell of a lot better assistance, with lifting devices and automatons doing a lot of the more arduous tasks. The reality is that those who will be retiring in 2028 all started work in 1988. I am interested in getting feedback from SIPTU regarding how much, to their knowledge, this informed the debate. There was somebody from the union movement there, but did SIPTU feed this information to the people concerned? Having read the report from the commission, it seems that some of its members are removed from the reality of people's lives. As I pointed out on the day the chair of the commission was before us, the State recognises physical capacity inasmuch as gardaí and people in the Army are not expected to work to 66 because of the very physical nature of the job. It depends on one's rank. If you become desk-bound, you have a chance of staying longer. There is a recognition that if you are out on the beat, your ability when you are in your 60s is not quite the same as it was in your were in your 20s, 30s and so on. How much input did SIPTU have and what sort of response did it receive? Do the witnesses think that point was taken on board? Has SIPTU conducted research on the total number of people who will reach pension age in the late 2020s and early 2030s and who are involved in occupations that require ongoing physical input? That could mean people who work in shops. It is so vast an a area, particularly when one thinks of all the different ranges involved.

I am not in favour of designating industries. I am of the view that when one reaches a certain age, one should get the pension. The reason I say that is because as sure as you make a list, you will find somebody who is not on that list. I am interested in the witnesses' views on that matter. Should we just stick with 66 and raise the money in some other way? I will be open and straight here: it is the solution I favour. This is the big issue, but there many other things in the report. The employment issues has to be dealt with, but I do not think that anybody argues about that. Everyone accepts it. A person is right to continue working if he or she wants to do so. We need to get on with the job here in the Dáil, but there is no big debate about that because everyone is on the same side of that argument. It comes down to whether we can afford to continue to pay pensions at 66. If we do not, will we hit a vast number of people who engaged in particular types of work during their lives and who could not be reasonably expected to continue working after 66.

There is another matter. I read the submission from Family Carers Ireland last night. The witnesses might be interested to know that I recently made submissions to the Minister for Social Protection and to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, which followed on from a pre-budget submission that was made by this committee. I distilled out some issues that I thought were in urgent need of address, including the IQA means test. I compared two couples where one knew the rules and the other did not, where one put all the money into a joint account and the other did not and where the primary earner was very careful not to put it into a joint account. Of course, it is always recommended to put the money into a joint account. Presumably, the couple would say that it is both of their incomes, which is a concept I agree with. I was in that situation myself. If there is a lump sum, savings from the primary earner's income, money from an inheritance or whatever, however, the means test means that IQA will be taken away.

There has been a lot of debate about the disability issue, which is an issue that I have raised in the Dáil. It becomes an increasing issue where parents die and the family home is broken up so the proceeds are divided between the children. Once the amount goes over €50,000, one hits an absolute wall. Let us consider the example of three children, one of whom has been severely disabled from birth, and a house that is valued at €450,000, which is not a massive price for a house in urban areas nowadays. So the two children would inherit their share of €450,000, namely, €150,000 each. They would get that without incurring any inheritance tax. The third child would get the same amount without incurring any inheritance tax but the Department of Social Welfare would take away the whole disability allowance. It is interesting that Family Carers Ireland focused on that and on the disregard for savings. It would be fair to say that this committee has been very supportive of that. I have gone one step further. I went to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and stated that this will not cost anything significant but that there is a total injustice here.

Ms Duffy mentioned the issue of the self-employed versus the employed in terms of pensions. People can earn €200 a week under the IQA if they are employed and they cannot if they are self-employed. I have that on my shopping list. If Ms Duffy is interested in getting my shopping list, she can send me an email. She can find my email on the web very easily and I will send my shopping list so she will see what I submitted. I think she will say that one of us must have seen the other's paper because they are uncanny in their similarities. It is an issue that is hitting carers and people on disability allowance, in other words, the caree and the carer, and it is one that needs to be addressed.

I want to address the issue of the long-time carer. In the main, when people are caring for a parent, it is not that long-term but where parents have a highly disabled child, it can often be a lifetime from the time the child is born. As Ms Duffy pointed out, that means a person might have five, seven, eight or ten years work in the commercial workforce and then, suddenly, they hit a wall. In those cases, we have to do something, both on the 20-year rule and also on the contributions rule. I would not necessarily be in favour of going much beyond that but we have to look after that particular group, who really dedicate their lives not only to their child, but to do a job that the State could never do as well, in my view, and they should get every support for doing that. If that is what they choose to do and if that is their free choice, that is fair enough, but it is still a hugely onerous task to take on and it needs every support. We need to get rid of the disadvantage of going that route.

I could say a lot more. The Family Carers Ireland paper on this issue, which is not all on pensions, is very relevant. I would be particularly interested in the contribution from the unions in regard to whether we can get some fix on the figures for how many people there are. It is totally ridiculous to expect them to work into their late 60s in the occupation for which they are trained. I do not buy into this malarkey that people can suddenly train themselves to become a computer scientist or something else at that age. I will never stop anybody doing anything, but we cannot expect them to do that and that is the difference.