Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

To tie back to some of my earlier comments, during recent years some decisions have been made on trying to improve the sustainability of the Social Insurance Fund. Some of those decisions were signalled a long time ago while others were taken more recently. I presume the Deputy is talking primarily from the changing contributions from 260 to 520. Changes were made to the bands of entitlement, depending on the individual's contribution history. These changes were implemented during recent years, albeit they were signalled some time ago.

We are talking about accessing the contributory pension. For a contributory pension, the thinking at the time was that the number of contributions required, 260 over the course of a lifetime of work, was relatively low compared with international experience. This was part of the thinking that went in. Although home-maker credits were put in place, there are issues in this regard. The Department has signalled that it is looking at reviewing the entire suite of pension offerings, such as moving from a fixed number of contributions to a total contributions approach. All the changes are enormously tricky. There are winners and losers and it is very complex in terms of the interaction between people's State pensions and whatever private pensions they may or may not have provided for. In all cases, the pension suite is underpinned by the non-contributory pension. People who have no contribution history can qualify for a non-contributory pension and the rate of payment is not significantly different from that of the contributory pension.