Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all of our guests to the committee. We had a stark reminder in relation to the cost of ageing in a report prepared by the Department a number of years ago in the context of health and pension expenditure in particular.

To go through this fund, I welcome the proposals that are under consideration here today. I will start with the existing funds. This is not new or novel. We are replicating tried and tested methods here, with the National Pensions Reserve Fund being one of the most recent examples. We got a nice reminder from Mr. Ashmore that we are supposed to be drawing down money from that fund in 18 months' time to help pay for pensions. Unfortunately, the Cabinet has decided to increase PRSI rates to deal with that because the pension fund went to Anglo Irish Bank back in the day.