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

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their submissions. Unfortunately, today has been broken up between different committee meetings and different things going on.

First, how often does ALONE come across the problem of a person who may be living in a very poor house, has a very modest income all his or her life and has been squirrelling money away because he or she thinks it is going to pay for the nursing home? That person is on a non-contributory pension and suddenly finds that he or she is means-tested at an absolutely bizarre rate. For example, once people hit over €40,000, they are means-tested at a rate of 20%. They are expected to spend the capital.

Logically, they would be better off spending the capital, but people who have saved all their lives are often very reluctant to spend it. They are afraid. Do the witnesses come across that problem? I come across it all the time. Sometimes there is a dichotomy between the living conditions and the amount of money in the bank.

I was glad to hear the disability allowance issue raised. I have come across this in respect of parents who have died but who were very careful during their lifetimes. If such parents left the proceeds of a house and maybe some savings to, say, three offspring, one disabled since birth and who has never worked, the two without a disability will get money tax-free up to €350,000, whereas the person on the disability allowance will lose all of that allowance. Would the witnesses care to comment further on that? I am referring to a real-life situation I have come across.

The other issue relates to middle-class or working people, or people who have worked all their lives, mainly one-income families. The great anomaly with the increase for the qualified adult is that where a couple have shared all their assets, resources and the money coming into the house, based on a partnership with a division of labour, they are penalised. They would not be penalised if they had kept the resources in their own names.

There is a further anomaly I want to talk about in respect of pensions. I wonder whether the witnesses come across it. I come across it all the time. Maybe this is because I live in an area with many fishers and farmers. It is a mad anomaly. Older people are more likely to be on a non-contributory pension. As time goes on, there will be fewer people on it. If your farm income is less than €5,000, you cannot pay PRSI, meaning you have no way to buy insurance. The anomaly is that if you are a non-contributory pensioner and earn €200 per week or less, you get to keep it all, means-test free. I know of a fisherman who was taken to court over this matter. He earned the amount in question fishing and did not declare the income. It was assessed on the basis that the first €30 was exempt. The rest was not, and the authorities wanted €170 back. Do the witnesses, as members of organisations dealing with elderly people, come across this? I certainly do. I would say the Cathaoirleach and most rural Deputies, including my colleague Senator Eugene Murphy, have come across it. It is very common. What is the witnesses' position on this? Should a simple change be made so the incomes of the self-employed and the employed will be treated the same, with no crazy, irrational, illogical discrepancy between the two?

I would like an answer to those simple questions. We could have a big philosophical debate about it but ultimately people want practical, incremental change. We are not going to change the world in a week; we will change it by getting rid of the worst anomalies in the system.

On housing, I worry about what will occur if a large number of our pensioners wind up in private rental housing. They could have quite good pension arrangements, such as a private pension and a State pension, but if they are in private rental housing without State assistance, they will hit the wall. I agree on that. It raises two issues. Until more recent times, pensioners tended to be in two categories. They were either in social housing, where the rent was relative to their income, or they owned their houses. Very few were in private rental accommodation. We need to think of a totally new approach if people are going to end up in private rental accommodation. The first of two solutions is changing the eligibility criteria for social housing for elderly people in order to widen the scope. For people with very modest incomes in private rented accommodation, the costs are too high. I agree that this is an issue we will have to tackle in the future, either through the housing budgets or the welfare budgets. It becomes unsustainable. For people in social housing, one would hope that the social housing rents will match incomes right across the board, be it in respect of social assistance or pension payments.