Mr. Se?n Moynihan:

People mentioned benchmarking of the pension.

It is in the programme for Government and we would like it executed. We struggle to know how the State is going to plan. If the pension is benchmarked at 35%, you can then plan for the future. We think, and it has been proven by other think-tanks, that the State ultimately can afford a pension. At the moment, the pension comes out of daily expenditure so it is not even ring-fenced within the budget. Every year or every couple of years, especially after going through inflation, we have a whole bun fight of what the State pension should go up by and around fivers and all these types of things. There is no certainty for older people and the worry that it brings. There is also no certainty for the State in planning for what it needs to do as we get an ageing demographic. From our point of view, that is the type of planning that needs to go in.

The reality is that 34% of the average industrial wage puts a floor under people. It is not excessively generous. If people have crises, housing issues or anything else, at least it is a start on that.

On the complexity of the system that the Senator mentioned, it has been outlined by a lot of colleagues how that needs to be streamlined and how we need to do the payments on it. At the end of the day, we have to realise the number of people who live on their own; approximately 33% of older people live on their own and that is ever increasing. We need to make a provision for that because whether it is health and welfare, falls, costs or risks of poverty in question, all those risks increase when you live on your own. Ultimately, we need elements in the system to respond to that.