Mr. Se?n Moynihan:

From what we have heard, a lot of us are unified on the benchmarking of the pension, back office ease of access and a change of philosophy on the basis of what we want to create. I sort of feel for the officials in the Department because of the number of older people and how everybody has a unique journey of life, different income and everything else. The officials must be wrestling with all these things trying to means-test across eight or nine different things and it is nearly impossible to legislate. If we reverse the philosophy then we do not have to grapple. We give people what they are entitled to in an easy way and if people have income over a certain threshold then ultimately it can be taxed as is done in other ways.

The final thing we would say is the housing needs of older people need to be looked at because ultimately from a social protection perspective that is where the real problem in the long-term future is with an ageing demographic.