Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is what I am getting from the engagement I have had with the national parties. The Deputy mentioned the gratuity. It has been a very talked about issue among councillors. I always want to be very straight and clear with local authority members about what I can and cannot do. I was very honest with them because the Moorhead report recommended setting up a committee to look at pension rights and entitlements of councillors into the future. That is what we have done. The Moorhead report also noted that a benefit of gratuity can be triggered from the age of 50 in terms of not paying into a pension scheme. There are very significant challenges in that path to go through with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We have committed to establishing a committee. We are going to work through it with the AILG and the councillor bodies and we will see what we can come up with at the end of that process. I wanted to be very honest with people that I do not see that happening in the immediate term. I wanted to be very clear on that. I do not want to build up expectations that something is going to happen when it is not.