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

Everyone was saying it was very expensive and that is 6% from people's salary that they are being asked to pay in an extra contribution. We were arguing about people having to pay a minuscule difference. It is a very small difference when you look at the report from the Commission on Taxation and Welfare. There were proposals A, B, C and D. We dismissed A and B and it was between C and D. The PRSI differences are very small between B and C, in other words keeping the pension age at 66 and topping it up by 10% in both cases. Everything else would have been done the same except for the retirement age of 66 going up to 68. Everyone said that was an enormous amount of extra PRSI and that the public would not be able to bear it but 6% is a lot bigger than anything we were looking at. It is way bigger and it slightly surprises me that everyone thinks that every person on a modest income can suddenly afford 6% but that they could not afford, if it had been on them because it could have been on the employer, a minuscule change to afford to keep the pension coming at 66 years of age.

The second question I have is as follows. Let us say for argument's sake that instead of taking 6% off people and throwing them over to the private sector and then throwing another 2% in from the Exchequer, which is a hell of a lot of money, let us suppose that was instead charged to the State's system and it went into the social welfare fund. Did the Department look at that because it would be a hell of a pile of money going into the social welfare fund and I presume the general Government balance, GGB, takes the social welfare fund in? We are good for GGB. Was that looked at, even though it was in a separate ring-fenced fund?