Mr. Justin Moran:

I will take the questions in reverse order.

A draft copy of the report was sent to the Department of Social Protection in advance to get its comment, feedback and information. Then, once it was published, copies were sent to the Minister and the Department. We received an acknowledgement from the Minister. We have not had an opportunity to discuss the report with him but we have discussed it with officials from the Department of Social Protection as recently as Monday as part of a bilateral meeting with the community and voluntary pillar.

Regarding updated figures, we wanted to use the figures we had in the report because the Department gave us them quite specifically. I believe a parliamentary question about this was asked last year. I forget the exact figure, but more than 40,000 were affected by the cuts from 2012.

Regarding the Deputy's last point about the transition pension and mandatory retirement, it is a very good example perhaps not of a budgetary cross-cutting theme, but certainly a Government cross-cutting theme. A decision was made to increase the State pension age to 66 by abolishing the transition pension - in effect, that was what was done - and it will increase to 67 and then to 68, but mandatory retirement clauses were left uncut. If one does one and not the other, one then ends up with the anomaly the Deputy has pointed out, namely, the large number of people aged 65 on jobseeker's benefit. If an increase in the pension age were to be considered, the abolition of mandatory retirement ages should be considered. This will get worse when the pension age increases again to 67 in 2021. Obviously, we are hopeful legislation seeking to abolish mandatory retirement will be enacted - I believe Deputies introduced such legislation - but this is one example of a Department doing one thing and not necessarily thinking through how it might affect another Department.