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

That is exactly the debate we needed to have today. I am glad Mr. Berney made that clear statement. Just because they come in with a Bill and have fixed on a model does not mean the only thing we can do is tinker at the edges. We can look at it as ab initio because we never had it before. This is a Government proposal but not an Oireachtas proposal. We can say, "No, go back and reshape the whole model." We do not have to recommend this goes forward with minor amendments. We can do what we want. We are only at the beginning of this and the witnesses are first up. Maybe they are the radical voice at the table.

There has been much badly informed commentary by the media on keeping the pension age at 66. ICTU stood out from that report, if I remember rightly, and said to keep it at 66. When you examine it, the PRSI difference in cost was minimal. Both of the options we were given needed State subsidy. Keeping it at 66 was not putting up the PRSI contributions that appreciably. I think we all agree self-employed contributions are low for the benefits a person gets on invalidity and so on. I do not go along with the presumption that, just because ICTU is the only one that stands out, it is necessarily wrong. Those who stand out can often be proven in hindsight to be right.