Professor John Doyle:

That is what the IIEA report stated. It did not break it down but it said the cost of equalising pensions would be €3.8 billion per year. There are 390,000 pensioners so if that is spread evenly across each pensioner, that equates to just under €10,000 each. There is no likelihood of future governments agreeing to that. The contributory pension is the new one post 2026 where they had improved pensions a lot in the North and in the wider UK. There is now about €20 per week difference for a contributory pension and about €32 per week in the non-contributory. The cost of equalising the state pensions, North and South, would be about €400 million a year, not €3.8 billion.