Mr. Se?n Moynihan:

I might address the housing issue and my colleague will address the income element. From our point of view, in older age housing means safety and security which applies to all of us because we all will face challenges in life. We all know income will drop because we will all at some stage be bereaved of friends, family or partners or we will all face health issues. For us, we need to change completely. The reality is that we can nearly solve the housing crisis through providing housing for an ageing population. Access to social housing, etc. is only for people who meet a certain criteria. People always talk about rightsizing and downsizing but where do people go? What we can do is keep pensions in communities, build housing for older people and give people a wider choice in where they might want to live in older age, while providing safety and security.

Two big things have happened in Ireland. We have had a change in family size or household size and we have an ageing demographic so we need to do a deep dive on the impact on the State in the next 20 years. In the past few years, the Central Bank has done an amazing amount of work on what a green economy and carbon change will mean for the economy and our society going forward. We need to do the same thing for an ageing population and changes in household size in terms of financial costs and benefits.