Ms Gr?inne Loughran:

I will come in briefly on where we are at on benchmarking. The roadmap for social inclusion committed to the introduction of a system of benchmarking rates of pension to wages and inflation. The commitment was downgraded. The mid-term review of the roadmap revised the statement to use the smoothed earnings approach to benchmarking and indexation as an input in the annual budget process. There was never any public explanation as to why the commitment was revised. We ascertained via parliamentary questions that the input was developed. ALONE requested the budgetary input regarding benchmarking from the Department of Social Protection via a freedom of information, FOI, request. The request was denied. The schedule of records that we received showed that the technical paper developed was five pages in length. The truth is that we are not entirely sure where the original commitment has gone. We believe it has been downgraded and it is to stay that way. We asked if that was the case, it be explained publicly. We have not received a response to that.