Mr. Justin Moran:

The most recent figures we have received in that regard indicate a cost of €290 million. We have been trying to identify the year to which backdating will be extended. Will it be back to the 1940s and 1950s or to 1973, the year that the marriage bar was ended? Age Action Ireland and the National Women's Council of Ireland, which is supportive of this initiative, see 1973 as the preferred year to which the scheme should be backdated. A cost of €290 million for this has been indicated to us but it is unclear to what year the scheme has been backdated in the calculation carried out to reach that figure.