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

I would say the Minister's heart bleeds for the person who did five weeks at 18 and then started back at 54 years of age and they lose out because of the few extra contributions. I agree that the averaging is full of anomalies. However I am still interested to find out how many people in the last year - because that is an actuality of fact - were better off on the averaging system, given the realities of people's lives. The 40-year challenge is quite a big one and in a lot of cases, the way the thing is structured it is fair to say a lot of people are better off on the averaging system. However I could be incorrect because maybe the wrong people are coming to me.

If we had those figures, we could have an informed debate about the impact of this.