Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the presentation. We might have the sequencing a little bit out of order in terms of when we brought the Department in because we still have a lot of work to do. The witnesses will have seen that we had representatives of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, in with us last week and it raised a lot of interesting aspects of this Bill. It is a significant piece of work and, therefore, I would not be surprised if a request to come back lands on the witnesses' desks after we have done a bit more work on this as a committee.

I will ask about some small details before I put a bigger question on the central processing authority and the structure of the pensions. The age limit was raised last week and we have set it at 23. ICTU wondered why it was not 16, when workers can begin to pay PRSI at 16. There was a suggestion that taking 23 as a jumping-off point might be classist. I am sure ICTU could set out its thinking on that. Why did we land on 23 as opposed to 16 or any other point younger than 23?