Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection

Report of the Commission on Pensions: Discussion (Resumed)

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Before I commence I wish to remind members participating remotely that they must do so from within the precincts of Leinster House. We have reconvened to continue our discussion on the recently published report of the Commission on Pensions.

This is our third session of public hearings. As previously mentioned the State pension is valued by all of society and is the bedrock of the pension system in Ireland. It is extremely effective at preventing pensioners from falling into poverty and we want to make sure this remains the case into the future. Last week, we heard from the Commission on Pensions chairperson, Ms Josephine Feehily. The commission was an independent body made up of pension experts, academics and workers representative groups. The commission has completed its work. Its comprehensive report was published last month. This report states that that current State pension is not sustainable in its current format and needs to be changed. The population is set to increase from 5 million to more than 6 million by 2050. That is something we need to plan for to ensure that older people have an adequate pension and a safety net to keep them out of poverty.

There are clear challenges in ensuring the sustainability of state pensions for future generations. This has been known for many years and is confirmed by the report of the Commission on Pensions. The Government has asked this committee for our views on the recommendations set out in the report. This follows on from the committee's remit and our recent submission to the commission.

The committee's submission and during contributions at the various pensions hearings has consistently highlighted the issues related to those who are in manual employment who may not be physically able to continue work beyond 65 years and a related group, namely family carers, who may not have the contributions to avail of a full contributory pension. At our hearings last week we touched on this particular pension challenge facing family carers in the home, predominantly women, and the self-employed, particularly those in the construction industry. In this regard, I welcome Mr. Michael Taft, senior economist and Ms Rachel Ryan, barrister and head of legal rights unit, SIPTU; Mr. Liam Berney, industrial officer, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU; and Ms Clare Duffy, policy and public affairs manager, Family Carers Ireland.

Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if the witnesses' statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction. Witnesses are reminded that full parliamentary privilege only applies to those participating from within the precincts of Leinster House. Witnesses participating remotely should exercise caution in terms of their utterances accordingly and be attentive to the direction of the Chair in this regard.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I call Mr. Taft to make his opening statement.

Mr. Michael Taft:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present our perspective on the recommendations of the Commission on Pensions. Myself and Ms Ryan will be in a position to take questions afterwards.

SIPTU launched the STOP67 campaign because of widespread concern among our members at the prospect at that time of the pension age being increased to 67 years at the beginning of this year. For the purposes of this, our opening statement will address two areas. The first is the fiscal arguments underpinning the commission’s recommendation to increase the pension age. Everyone accepts pension expenditure will increase in the future. However, increasing the pension age will save little money and will be an ineffective tool in ensuring pension sustainability. The commission relied on models developed by the Department of Finance and the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, to estimate savings from increasing the pension age. Both these models showed that by 2050 the savings would be fractional, that is, less than 1% of national income. While in nominal terms this is not insignificant, both models showed increasing the pension age would only save between 10% to 15% of the estimated overall increase in pension expenditure. However, the Department of Social Protection produced data that suggests that these models may considerably overestimate the savings from increasing the pension age. The reason for the discrepancy appears to be that the Department of Finance and IFAC estimated the impact on pension expenditure but did not factor in offsetting costs such as other social insurance payments, including the new benefits payment for those aged over 65. The Department of Social Protection figures did factor in these costs. That may explain the considerable discrepancy between the two. Although SIPTU referred to this in its submission to the commission, unfortunately the commission did not refer at all to the Department of Social Protection’s data. This led the ICTU nominee to the commission, Ms Ethel Buckley, deputy general secretary of SIPTU, to oppose the recommended pension age increase. She was the only commission member to do so.

I now turn to the second issue of mandatory retirement before State pension age. A key component in moving to a flexible pension system involves the introduction of a statutory right to remain in work at least up to the State pension age and potentially for years afterwards. The increase in the State pension age has deepened the hardship felt by workers forced to retire from their employment at an age before which the State pension becomes payable. Many workers, although not all, will wish to remain in their employment until their pension becomes payable due to their continued ability to do their job and the fact that they will see a significant drop in their income if forced to retire. Addressing this issue requires legislative change.

The Employment Equality Acts, 1998 to 2015, state that an employer cannot discriminate against a worker on the grounds of age. The Act allows, but does not require, employers to set a mandatory retirement age for workers, provided it can be justified on objective grounds. It is the law that must be justified rather than the decisions of individual employers. However, there have never been any national employment policies, labour market requirements or social policy objectives set out by the Government on the imposition of a workplace retirement age under the Employment Equality Act, as required by European law. SIPTU welcomes the Commission on Pensions recommendations for legislative change that allows but does not compel an employee to stay in employment until State pension age and calls for this change to be addressed by means of an amendment to the Employment Equality Act. This recommendation is in line with SIPTU’s submission, which called for a flexible pension age regime that exists in many other EU countries.

The commission further recommended the Government consider allowing people with long contribution records to access their State pension entitlements at age 65 years. We welcome this first step towards greater flexibility but would urge the committee to consider in its analysis decoupling this recommendation from the pension age increase and consider more flexible options such as accessing pension entitlements at an earlier age, especially for those in arduous and-or hazardous occupations.

The commission failed to construct a consensus among all stakeholders regarding a credible path to pension sustainability and flexibility, one that will take these issues out of the electoral cycle. In fact, by postponing the increase in the pension age to 2028, it has parachuted the issue into the next general election. The committee has time to address the many defects of the commission report while urging swift action to implement the positive recommendations such as reform of mandatory retirement contracts. The committee could investigate the discrepancies between savings estimates. It can take up the issue of flexibility, especially in arduous occupations. Most of all, it could help initiate an authentic stakeholder forum that would seek a genuine consensus based on best-case evidence.

Mr. Liam Berney:

As the representative body for 45 unions collectively representing the interests of some 800,000 workers in all sectors of the economy on the island, ICTU, would like to thank members of the committee for the invitation to discuss the report of the Commission on Pensions. My colleague, Dr. Laura Bambrick, social policy officer, may join us later but she is currently appearing before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

First, ICTU wishes to acknowledge the work of the commission. It has produced a comprehensive and detailed report that puts forward a wide range of recommendations to share the increasing costs of the State pension between the State, employers, the self-employed, workers and the generations, both current and future. In the brief time I have available for my opening remarks, I will focus on the key challenges in the report’s recommendations and the key improvements on previous pension policy from the perspective of working people.

ICTU has never denied the challenge population ageing presents for the public finances if no action is taken. However, the 2011 Pensions Act put Ireland on course to have the highest pension age in the OECD in 2028, despite the fact that we have a relatively young population. It is now acknowledged that this policy went too far, too fast and forced workers at 65 to sign on, putting them at risk of poverty at the end of their working life. ICTU is pleased the commission has heard and agreed with us on this.

The commission is recommending moving to a European-style, flexible pension age including proposing that the Government gives a right to retire on a full State pension from age 65 to workers who have worked from a young age. ICTU was first to identify the need for, and to urge previous Governments to introduce, provision for early access to the State pension. As my colleague, Mr. Michael Taft, has pointed out, ICTU was the only member of the commission not to support the recommendation to increase the pension age to 67 and 68 for people without sufficient PRSI contributions. However, we acknowledge that recommending that the increase in the qualifying age be delayed and introduced gradually over a longer period is an improvement on the 2011 Act and will bring the increase in the pension age in step with other EU member states.

ICTU is pleased the commission is recommending new legislation to allow, but not compel, workers to remain in their jobs up until at least the pension age. We have long argued that existing soft measures have proved inadequate for many workers who want to stay in their job beyond the retirement age in their employment contract.

On the recommended increases to social insurance contributions, ICTU agrees, along with a range of bodies including the State’s own advisory body, the tax strategy group, that the self-employed contribution should be adjusted up to at least the employer rate. ICTU is also on the record highlighting Ireland as an outlier on employer social insurance contributions. Ireland has the second lowest rate of employer PRSI in the 27 member states. We are disappointed by the commission’s lack of ambition in the size of the increase it recommends for employers.

ICTU supports in principle the need for intergenerational equity to ensure that the costs of maintaining current payment rates are not placed solely on younger workers. However, we are concerned that the recommendation to remove the exemption to pay PRSI on people aged 66 and over could unfairly and disproportionately impact certain groups of pensioners. For example, today’s retired and older pre-1995 civil and public servants have no entitlement to the State pension. Many of these workers rely on a public sector pension that is less than the value of the State pension. They would be liable for a 4% PRSI contribution on their pension income in excess of €100 per week, increasing their risk of poverty. As the Chairman said earlier, it should be everybody's intention to ensure that people do not slide into poverty in retirement. We are calling for the Commission on Taxation and Welfare to be allowed the time and space to consider this recommendation before the Government takes a decision.

ICTU is pleased to see that many of our long-standing policy positions on benchmarking and index-linking pension payment rates, introducing auto-enrolment, ring fencing State pension contributions, issuing regular PRSI contributions statements and easier access for long-term carers are included in the Commission’s recommendations.

ICTU will continue its engagement with union members, members of Government and the Opposition, and the Commission on Taxation and Welfare to ensure the increasing financial costs of the State pension will, as intended by the commission, be shared fairly and equitably. Along with my colleague Mr. Michael Taft, I am happy to answer any questions members may have.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Finally, we will call on Ms Duffy to make her opening statement.

Ms Clare Duffy:

On behalf of Family Carers Ireland my colleague Catherine Cox and I welcome the opportunity to speak to the committee today about the report of the Commission on Pensions and specifically its recommendations on the development of a sustainable State pension system that recognises rather than penalises family carers and values the immense contribution they make through their years of care giving in the same way that we value social insurance contributions paid through PRSI. Family Carers Ireland is heartened by the programme for Government commitment to address the long-standing pension anomaly affecting family carers which was transposed into the terms of reference of the pensions commission. We were fortunate enough to make a written and oral submission to the commission and warmly welcome the recommendations contained in its report published last month.

Our position with regard to the State pension reflects the lived experience of family carers, the majority of whom are women, who have been denied a State pension or who receive a reduced pension as a direct consequence of their years spent care giving. Government policy has long supported initiatives to maintain the care of people in their own homes. These long-standing and laudable ambitions, while welcome, are entirely predicated on the availability and willingness of family and friends to take on a caring role. Today, one in eight people in Ireland provides care. We estimate that this number will need to increase to one in five by 2030 to meet the growing demand for care. If we are to achieve this, then Government must replace any remaining archaic policies that penalise family caregiving, not least of which are elements of the existing pension regime that allow a long-term carer to reach retirement age with no entitlement to a State pension or only a reduced entitlement. While the number of carers affected is low at approximately 100 carers per year, the impact on them and the message this sends to broader caring community is significant.

In our submission to the commission we placed particular emphasis on long-term carers, that is those who have cared for more than 20 years and are, therefore, unlikely to have paid the 520 contributions necessary to qualify for a contributory State pension nor are they protected by the safeguards that currently exist within the State pension regime. These safeguards are in place to protect a person’s entitlement to a State pension in later life. However, anomalies exist within each safeguard that undermine their value and put carers at risk of falling through the net. What are these anomalies and how do they affect family carers?

First, the general point must be made that the pension system is incredibly complicated and the general population, including carers are often confused or misinformed about their pension entitlements. There is a general understanding among some that there is no significant difference between the contributory and non-contributory State pension, at only €10 to €20 per week but people do not understand that the non-contributory State pension is means tested. There is a mistaken belief that it is a guaranteed payment.

Another major issue for carers is the requirement for applicants to have at least 520 paid contributions, which renders most of the safety net schemes ineffective for family carers who have not secured ten years of paid contributions. This is a particular challenge for long-term carers who have been forced to leave employment, often at a relatively young age, following the birth of a child with special needs. The 520 contributions rule also undermines the value of the current homemaker's scheme.

The imposition of a means test on the increase for a qualified adult, IQA, for both the contributory and non-contributory State pension has led to some family carers not qualifying for an IQA based on their income or assets. The two-year rule with regard to credited social insurance contributionsmeans some family carers are not receiving credits while in receipt of carer's allowance, a fact many carers are oblivious to. The disregard of €20,000 in respect of savings and capital for the non-contributory pension is disproportionately low, particularly for families who have put aside money to make provision for the future care of their loved one. The assessment of land not productively used is unfair to some landowners who may be unable to sell, rent or use the land themselves. There are also issues with the differential treatment of people who are employed versus those who are self-employed in respect of the €200 weekly disregard in earnings for the non-contributory State pension.

One fact that is often overlooked but, thankfully, was reflected in the pension commission's report is that carers whose partner is or was employed by the Civil Service and who receives a pre-1995 Civil Service pension are not afforded the normal protections offered through the State pension system.

Family Carers Ireland acknowledges the positive changes brought about through the introduction of the interim total contributions approach, TCA, which has addressed a significant number of the legacy issues associated with the yearly contributions approach. It does not, however, address all of them. The most notable issue is that family carers are still required to have at least 520 paid contributions, and even for those who have 520 paid contributions, their pension entitlement, while it may increase, will still not increase to the maximum level. For this reason, in our submission to the pensions commission we called for a dedicated pension for long-term family carers to ensure they all receive a full pension entitlement equivalent to the maximum contributory State pension. In its report the Commission on Pensions made three recommendations on long-term carers. The first is that long-term carers, that is, those who have been caring for more than 20 years, should be given access to a contributory State pension by having retrospective contributions paid for them by the Exchequer for any gaps in their contribution records due to caregiving. The second recommendation was that those contributions be exclusively for contributory State pension purposes and recognised as paid contributions for the purposes of such caregivers qualifying for the contributory State pension and calculating their entitlement. This would abolish the issue arising from the requirement to have 520 contributions. Finally, but importantly, the commission recommended the establishment of a family carer register because it recognised the immense challenge in identifying who long-term family carers are. While the pensions commission's approach is to subsume long-term carers into the interim TCA system rather than creating a dedicated carer's pension, as we had originally sought, this is not necessarily an issue for Family Carers Ireland as the three recommendations, if fully adopted, would address many of the legacy issues associated with carers' access to the State pension.

We understand that the commission's report will be referred to the Cabinet committee on economic recovery and investment for consideration, with a view to bringing a recommended response and implementation plan to the Government by the end of March 2022. We believe that in order for the programme for Government commitment to address the pension anomaly affecting family carers to be achieved, it is necessary that all recommendations relating to family carers be approved and urgently implemented.

I thank the committee for its time. I am happy to take any questions members may have.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I thank Ms Duffy. We will now open up the discussion to questions from members. The first member to speak will be the Leas-Chathaoirleach of the committee, Deputy Ó Cathasaigh.

Photo of Marc Ó CathasaighMarc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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My first and most important question goes to Mr. Taft. What we have before us to consider is the report of the pensions commission. Mr. Taft makes the argument that the proposed increase in the pension age would not make as significant a contribution, in the context of pensions provision long-term, as is made out in the report. I am glancing across the modelling from which the committee has to work and looking across the four proposed packages. There might not be an enormous part payable by 2030, but the modelling out to 2050 and 2070 shows that the pension age makes a significant contribution. Am I to understand that Mr. Taft questions the modelling behind the four packages laid before us? My follow-on question is that if there are deficiencies in the modelling from Mr. Taft's perspective, where does that leave us when it comes to interpreting the pensions commission's report? If we accept Mr. Taft's analysis, do we find ourselves back at square one? I suppose we do not in one sense because he and other contributors have acknowledged that there is a lot in this report that they welcome. As for the financial analysis, however, where do we find ourselves, from Mr. Taft's point of view?

Mr. Michael Taft:

I will take up a couple of the Deputy's points and then come back to his final question.

As for the two models, increasing the pension age and how much that would save set against future pension expenditure, both the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the Department of Finance project that pension expenditure will increase out to 2050 by anywhere between 5.5% and 6% of national income, or GNI*. We do not dispute that. The increase might be high or might be low but it will be in that neighbourhood. The fiscal council says, however, that increasing the pension age will result in savings of only 0.7%. That is about 10% to 15% of total savings. That is taking on board only the fiscal council's own numbers. It is therefore not us saying this; it is the fiscal council saying it. We are only drawing attention to that fact.

It would be helpful were the committee to ask the Department of Social Protection for the data it presented in two papers in 2020. First was the collated briefing submitted to the Department of the Taoiseach for the programme for Government talks. That was presented at that time to what were to be the three coalition parties. There is also the ministerial brief to the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, part B, which was also published in 2020. They present data that potentially undermine - we say "potentially" because we will not set this in hard and fast rules - the projections of the Department of Finance and the fiscal council because the Department of Social Protection factors in offsetting costs. Just because the pension age is raised does not mean that somebody on invalidity pension will not still be paid by the Social Insurance Fund, so there are very little savings to be made there. It is the same with the benefit payment. If the committee were to seek those data from the Department, it would help the debate and help the committee come to an understanding of the issue.

The Deputy asked where we find ourselves. We will need to do a number of things, and this is a significant challenge. We will have to find measures to promote economic growth. Unlike what the Commission on Pensions says, economic growth will generate savings and will in fact have a better impact on the public finances than increasing the pension age. We will have to look at PRSI contributions and the incentivisation of people to work while they draw down their pensions. In one sense Ireland is advantaged because we have one of the highest employment rates among people over the age of 65. People want to work beyond that age, so it is a matter of building on those incentives. If people continue to work, they still pay PRSI and, of course, tax on a large part of any pension payment, which would be subject to income tax. Such incentivisation would therefore be a fiscal good. Those are the three areas where we should start. Setting a context and getting the data right are key. That is what we urge the committee to explore in the context of what the Department of Finance and the fiscal council say on the one hand and, on the other, what the Department of Social Protection says.

Photo of Marc Ó CathasaighMarc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I question Mr. Taft's use of the statistic of 0.7%. It sounds like a small figure, but 0.7% of GNI* is a very significant proportion of the national income. If we could get towards that percentage for our overseas development aid, we would be very excited. If we could get to that level of expenditure on our childcare services, we would be very excited. It is a significant amount of money. A lot of what Josephine Feehily spoke about when she was before the committee related to the solidarity principle. What if the proportion of savings that would arise from the proposed increase in the pension age were removed? Much of this discussion puts me in mind of the emissions targets and the emissions ceilings. The fact is that if one sector takes on less of the burden, other sectors have to bear that burden. I worry that the pension age is another case in point in that regard. If we look at the projections set out on page 13 of the report - and this is why I asked whether in Mr. Taft's opinion we can trust the modelling that lies underneath the report - we can see that packages 2 and 4 in particular try to share the pain. I think I have said previously at this committee that no easy choices are presented by the pensions commission; it presents a range of difficult choices. By not making a choice on the pension age and removing that aspect, are we asking people paying PRSI - and I think of PRSI on the incomes of the self-employed in particular - to take a disproportionate burden?

Mr. Michael Taft:

As I acknowledged in my opening statement, 0.7% is fractional but it is not insignificant. Of course, by 2050 it will be very large. It is also the case that it only makes up a very small percentage of the increase in overall future pension expenditure. For instance, if there is a pension sustainability problem, if it will be a particular size, and if increasing the pension age only gets us approximately 10%, 12% or 14% of the way, that would not get us very far. The problem is this debate has focused almost solely on the pension age. Listening to the public debate, you would think the pension age is the key to pension sustainability. It is not.

Are there other things that can be done that would be more economically efficient and socially equitable? We believe there are. However, ultimately, every legislator, Minister and Government has to make the calculation in respect of whether the benefit arising from the increase forgone outweighs the deficit that would be created if the pension age was increased. That is a judgment call. SIPTU believes that the same things can be achieved without forcing people to work longer to get their pension. In so many cases, the people in question, though they may not be in the most severe, arduous or hazardous occupations, will be in physically demanding occupations, and there will be a toll on their living standards because of that. It is a question of whether there is a better way of achieving the fiscal end while retaining that social good.

I remind members that although we often hear that life expectancy has risen to 20 or 22 years after the pension age of 66, healthy life expectancy, which is a measure used by the European Commission and the World Health Organization and to which we refer in our submission, is approximately ten to 12 years after the age of 66. It will increase in the future but the indications are that the increases in both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are slowing down. If you take two years off a person whose healthy life expectancy is ten to 12 years, that is a substantial inroad into their living standard. We believe there is a better way of doing it and achieving the same goal of pension sustainability.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I will take Mr. Taft up on that point. He made a valid point regarding the data from the Department of Social Protection and the committee will seek that information. To bring him back to a very important sentence in his evidence, he stated:

Many workers, although not all, will wish to remain in their employment until their State pension becomes payable due to their continued ability to do their job and the fact that they will see a significant drop in their income if forced to retire.

Following on from the remarks of the Leas-Chathaoirleach and the points Mr. Taft has made on the issue of pension sustainability, if the pension age is not increased, is there an incentive for people who are fit, well and capable of continuing to work to do so? In terms of that cohort of people, is there evidence from other European countries where people have continued to work? Mr. Taft made the point that Ireland is seeing far more people working beyond their 66th birthday. Does the increase in the pension age need to be introduced as an incentive to keep people who are fit, well and capable of remaining in employment working? What would be the impact of just getting rid of the ban on people remaining in work at 65 or 66? Is there any evidence to support that at the moment? I invite Mr. Taft or Ms Ryan to respond on those questions.

Mr. Michael Taft:

Increasing the pension age to 67 or 68 is the ultimate incentive to stay in work because if you do not do so and drop out, you lose your work income but cannot access your pension. That is a pretty hard incentive. It tells people to continue working because they will not get their pension. There may be better incentives. The report of the commission suggests two things. First, people who continue working can continue to accumulate contributions towards their pension record. That will be very important in the context of the total contributions approach, TCA. Second, people may defer their pension until the age of 70 and continue to work up to that age. The report does not make that as a hard proposal but refers to people's pension being compensated by 4% for each year they do not receive it. That would be a substantial financial incentive.

However, there are other incentives that go beyond legally forcing or trying to force people to work to the age of 68 or 69. An example of that comes from the OECD report on the challenges of meeting future pension costs. It points out there is a high level throughout Europe, including in Ireland, of people aged 50 to 60 who have a relatively low employment rate but, more important, suffer low pay and poor working conditions. The OECD makes the point that if people are in low-paid employment with poor working conditions and intermittent income or are underemployed at the age of 55, they are less likely to continue working to the pension age, never mind beyond it. There are arguments that there are incentives that can be put in place that would give people opportunity, such as our recommendation on mandatory contracts, and a financial and workplace incentive.

Incentives are important. The commission has suggested some such incentives. Consideration could be given to the suggestion from the OECD, which is being explored by SIPTU, that once people reach the age of 55 or 60, they can apply for reduced working hours in the workplace. If a person works 40 hours until the age of 66 and then stops working altogether, it is a bit of a cliff. Why not ease it in? That would mean people may be able to continue working. There many more soft measures for incentives, but also more socially equitable incentives.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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All members agree we need to develop those soft measures, regardless of the current debate, but the concern from the Pensions Commission and some of the evidence we have heard from economists is that if the statutory retirement age is not increased, those soft options will not have the impact on the numbers of people remaining in full-time or part-time employment. I do not have the answer to this. Mr. Taft may not have it either. Is there evidence from elsewhere that these soft options may not meet the 0.7% but would come close to it? It is not a black or white situation. Is there evidence that increasing the age threshold for the pension would bring in 0.7% of GNI*, but if all the soft options are coupled together, that could bring in a proportion of that 0.7% of GNI*? Does that evidence exist?

Mr. Michael Taft:

To be honest, I do not know. It might be worth investigating why we have such a high employment rate for those over the age of 65. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, may be of assistance on this. I suspect part of it might be down to older farmers continuing to work.

We will seek the assistance of the Central Statistics Office to identify where that high rate is coming from. The Chair referred to the 0.7%. The commission and the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council refer to it. We do not know that there will be savings of 0.7% as the Department of Social Protection suggests. It is potentially a figure that is up to two thirds lower. People say that we need to bring in the pension age increase to complement the soft initiatives. You do not need the soft initiatives when you force people to work to the age of 67 or 68 to get their pension. They will have to continue working and will continue to make pension contributions. The hard option means that we do not need many of the soft options.

Mr. Liam Berney:

There is another aspect to this. I preface my remarks by saying that, unlike Mr. Taft, I am not an economist. There is a social aspect to this that we need to consider too. The Chair referred to it in his opening comments to the committee. It relates to those people who literally cannot work beyond 65 because of the nature of their occupations. They might have to retire before 65. That includes people who work in construction, possibly from the early age of 16 or 17, until they are 61 or 62, where because of the arduous nature of their employment, they simply cannot work beyond that age. It does not only apply to construction. There are occupations in the health service where the same thing would apply. It is important to consider the economics of all of this but there are crucially important social aspects too. Asking a bricklayer, a nurse or somebody who works in an arduous occupation to work beyond 65 years of age, or even past a younger age than that, needs to be considered by the committee with regard to the impact it would have on those people. Getting the financial and economic side of this correct is important. It is important that whatever decisions the Government and legislators make are based on sound economics. There are also social considerations at play that need to be factored in.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Will Ms Duffy elaborate on the family carers register and how she envisages people would get on it? The concern that we would all have as Members of the Oireachtas is what would happen to people who are in a caring capacity who are not in receipt of the carer's allowance. As public representatives, we have all come across people who are not getting the care support payment. They end up falling through the cracks.

Ms Clare Duffy:

The commission went into this in great detail. How do we identify long-term carers? How do we define long-term carers? We need to start with that definition. It went into great detail about identifying these long-term carers. There is no single repository in Ireland that will tell us how many carers there are. There are different sorts of information, which the Chair has alluded to. People get the means-tested carer's support grant, which is not the perfect database. The most perfect database is probably the people who receive the annual carer's support grant because it is not means tested. We have just under 120,000 full-time family carers in that. The pensions report also looked at people who claim care-related tax reliefs or tax credits. That is imperfect too because there is no requirement for those recipients to actually provide full-term care.

The model which we have suggested, which has been reflected in the recommendations, is a model that is used in the UK, where there are statutory carer registers. How the UK supports carers is different from how we do it. The UK does it through local authorities and general practitioners hold carer registers. We have to think about that. The recommendation from the Pensions Commission was that the Government would work with stakeholders, which I assumed to be organisations such as ours, and that together, we would develop the carers register. It is an immense challenge, not least when people come off the register, if the person they are caring for passes away. We expect them to declare that and come off the register. There is much consideration. We are almost at the point where we have no choice but to grasp the nettle and to try to establish this. As I said, we do not have a single repository that identifies any type of carer, least of which are long-term carers who have been caring for more than 20 years. The recommendation is that it would be done alongside us, as stakeholders in the sector.

Photo of Marc Ó CathasaighMarc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I will direct these questions to Ms Duffy and Mr. Berney. I have asked general questions about the future world of work for the last couple of weeks but I will be more specific in asking these questions. Ms Duffy referred to the fact that it looks as if we will have more people working in the caring economy as we get closer to 2050. I want to give her the opportunity to elaborate on that. It will not be disrupted by artificial intelligence and such as much as other things are. Caring roles will still have to be taken on by humans. Mr. Berney referred to physically demanding professions, such as blocklayers. Is the number of people participating in that type of work staying constant or are there fewer people engaged in those physically demanding roles? Is it becoming easier to participate in such roles because of technological innovation or do we still find the same amount of people in those physically demanding roles? Nobody on this committee would expect a 67 or 68 year old to engage in those roles. Those are two questions about the world of work and the specific aspects that the witnesses represent.

Ms Clare Duffy:

I will answer the first question about carers. The Deputy's question refers to two different cohorts of carers. The first is the cohort that I represent, which is unpaid family carers. The CSO tells us that about 70% of unpaid family carers also juggle their caring responsibilities with paid employment. It is important that we recognise that. I should have said in my opening statement that the best way to secure a pension in retirement is to keep people engaged in the labour market and to support them to remain in employment. That is a significant challenge for family carers who often provide full-time care as well as trying to work. We need things like tax incentives and tax reliefs in the same way that we need childcare for parents like me who want to go out to work. We need to have respite to enable carers to engage in the workforce. It is an important point to make. We need to incentivise carers to remain in employment so that they get their pension in the same way that anyone else will.

I am glad that the Deputy referred to the second cohort of workers. They are home care workers and staff who are paid by the HSE or employed by people like us, who provide home care services. We have a substantial staff shortage and a crisis in home care. In recent years, funding for home care has no longer been the issue. The issue is securing home care staff. There are many reasons. One reason for this shortage is the poor terms and conditions associated with home care work and the lack of a pension entitlement for those workers is a significant issue. There are things that we need to think about and address for unpaid family carers and also for the paid home care workers who support the industry. There is a shortage at the moment.

Mr. Liam Berney:

The Deputy asked a fair question. I referred to blocklayers as one example of arduous employment but there are many others in the economy.

It is impossible to know what technological developments might come along in the future to eliminate the more arduous aspects. In construction, for example, there is still a very large number of people who are engaged in the type of arduous work that I have described. It is the same type of arduous work that the Deputy has said it would be unreasonable to expect them people to work beyond a particular age or well into their 60s but there are many occupations like that. I did reference nursing and, as the Deputy has said, nursing is a caring profession that is unlikely to see the technological innovation that will make it less arduous.

It is important to note what has happened in other jurisdictions. We can supply information to the committee on this matter. Committees like this one in other jurisdictions have developed ranks of occupations or set out occupations that should have access to the state pension or receive the state pension at an earlier age. I know that this is not something the Deputy would support, given that he is a member of the Green Party. In some countries, for instance, mining has been an occupation that the legislature has recognised as one that cannot continue into extended age. There is not a big tradition of mining in Ireland in the same way as there is in other countries, but mining is an example. There are attempts in other countries to classify occupations and give particular consideration to some by giving them early access to the state pension. We can provide information on that to the Deputy after this meeting.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I apologise for not being here earlier. I had to attend a Topical Issue debate in the Dáil.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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That is very important too.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Topical Issue matters are incredibly important around here.

I read the submissions and opening statements with interest. I will hone in on a few matters. One is that a vast number of people coming to contributory pension age would not be able to work after 66. In fact, many people retire before they reach 66 and do not get the State pension. That is because their jobs involved physical input. All of our physical abilities diminish with age, and this pension issue relates to a huge spectrum of professions and people. Care workers have been mentioned, which could be care assistants and nurses. All of the people who work in the building trades are definitely affected. There is a wide range of professions beyond that.

One thing that seems to get lost in the debate is contributions. We are talking about 2028. In order to have 40 years' worth of contributions in 2028, a person must have started work in 1988. In such circumstances, one must ask what was work like in 1988, in 1998 and during the Celtic tiger era in all of these industries and not what kind of facilities will somebody who starts work in 2028 have by 2068. I presume and hope they will have much better health and safety and a hell of a lot better assistance, with lifting devices and automatons doing a lot of the more arduous tasks. The reality is that those who will be retiring in 2028 all started work in 1988. I am interested in getting feedback from SIPTU regarding how much, to their knowledge, this informed the debate. There was somebody from the union movement there, but did SIPTU feed this information to the people concerned? Having read the report from the commission, it seems that some of its members are removed from the reality of people's lives. As I pointed out on the day the chair of the commission was before us, the State recognises physical capacity inasmuch as gardaí and people in the Army are not expected to work to 66 because of the very physical nature of the job. It depends on one's rank. If you become desk-bound, you have a chance of staying longer. There is a recognition that if you are out on the beat, your ability when you are in your 60s is not quite the same as it was in your were in your 20s, 30s and so on. How much input did SIPTU have and what sort of response did it receive? Do the witnesses think that point was taken on board? Has SIPTU conducted research on the total number of people who will reach pension age in the late 2020s and early 2030s and who are involved in occupations that require ongoing physical input? That could mean people who work in shops. It is so vast an a area, particularly when one thinks of all the different ranges involved.

I am not in favour of designating industries. I am of the view that when one reaches a certain age, one should get the pension. The reason I say that is because as sure as you make a list, you will find somebody who is not on that list. I am interested in the witnesses' views on that matter. Should we just stick with 66 and raise the money in some other way? I will be open and straight here: it is the solution I favour. This is the big issue, but there many other things in the report. The employment issues has to be dealt with, but I do not think that anybody argues about that. Everyone accepts it. A person is right to continue working if he or she wants to do so. We need to get on with the job here in the Dáil, but there is no big debate about that because everyone is on the same side of that argument. It comes down to whether we can afford to continue to pay pensions at 66. If we do not, will we hit a vast number of people who engaged in particular types of work during their lives and who could not be reasonably expected to continue working after 66.

There is another matter. I read the submission from Family Carers Ireland last night. The witnesses might be interested to know that I recently made submissions to the Minister for Social Protection and to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, which followed on from a pre-budget submission that was made by this committee. I distilled out some issues that I thought were in urgent need of address, including the IQA means test. I compared two couples where one knew the rules and the other did not, where one put all the money into a joint account and the other did not and where the primary earner was very careful not to put it into a joint account. Of course, it is always recommended to put the money into a joint account. Presumably, the couple would say that it is both of their incomes, which is a concept I agree with. I was in that situation myself. If there is a lump sum, savings from the primary earner's income, money from an inheritance or whatever, however, the means test means that IQA will be taken away.

There has been a lot of debate about the disability issue, which is an issue that I have raised in the Dáil. It becomes an increasing issue where parents die and the family home is broken up so the proceeds are divided between the children. Once the amount goes over €50,000, one hits an absolute wall. Let us consider the example of three children, one of whom has been severely disabled from birth, and a house that is valued at €450,000, which is not a massive price for a house in urban areas nowadays. So the two children would inherit their share of €450,000, namely, €150,000 each. They would get that without incurring any inheritance tax. The third child would get the same amount without incurring any inheritance tax but the Department of Social Welfare would take away the whole disability allowance. It is interesting that Family Carers Ireland focused on that and on the disregard for savings. It would be fair to say that this committee has been very supportive of that. I have gone one step further. I went to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and stated that this will not cost anything significant but that there is a total injustice here.

Ms Duffy mentioned the issue of the self-employed versus the employed in terms of pensions. People can earn €200 a week under the IQA if they are employed and they cannot if they are self-employed. I have that on my shopping list. If Ms Duffy is interested in getting my shopping list, she can send me an email. She can find my email on the web very easily and I will send my shopping list so she will see what I submitted. I think she will say that one of us must have seen the other's paper because they are uncanny in their similarities. It is an issue that is hitting carers and people on disability allowance, in other words, the caree and the carer, and it is one that needs to be addressed.

I want to address the issue of the long-time carer. In the main, when people are caring for a parent, it is not that long-term but where parents have a highly disabled child, it can often be a lifetime from the time the child is born. As Ms Duffy pointed out, that means a person might have five, seven, eight or ten years work in the commercial workforce and then, suddenly, they hit a wall. In those cases, we have to do something, both on the 20-year rule and also on the contributions rule. I would not necessarily be in favour of going much beyond that but we have to look after that particular group, who really dedicate their lives not only to their child, but to do a job that the State could never do as well, in my view, and they should get every support for doing that. If that is what they choose to do and if that is their free choice, that is fair enough, but it is still a hugely onerous task to take on and it needs every support. We need to get rid of the disadvantage of going that route.

I could say a lot more. The Family Carers Ireland paper on this issue, which is not all on pensions, is very relevant. I would be particularly interested in the contribution from the unions in regard to whether we can get some fix on the figures for how many people there are. It is totally ridiculous to expect them to work into their late 60s in the occupation for which they are trained. I do not buy into this malarkey that people can suddenly train themselves to become a computer scientist or something else at that age. I will never stop anybody doing anything, but we cannot expect them to do that and that is the difference.

Mr. Michael Taft:

I do not have the numbers off the top of my head but SIPTU will research this in terms of manual and non-manual occupations and we will send that to the committee. The problem is that we cannot say X number would find it physically difficult beyond the age of 66 because it is a combination of the different types of work, even within the same in factory or the same firm, so it is difficult to nail down. However, the Deputy has raised a couple of points. We could say that manual workers might be the ones who are most at risk and it may well be that those are the occupations. However, let us take a hospitality worker, a cleaner aged 64, who is flipping eight mattresses a day. I struggle to flip our mattress once every six months whereas they do six to eight a day, yet we do not think of that cleaner as being someone in an arduous task. There is this idea that in the work of the future, we are all just going to be sitting, punching numbers into a computer or doing the same thing on our smartphones. We ignore the vast range of occupations which, in many cases, might be fit for a younger person but when people hit the age of 60, it becomes extremely difficult and they are at risk of injury. Then, when we put that in combination with the issue of healthy life expectancy, we have a much different perspective. I will let Mr. Berney develop that. We will attempt to nail those numbers down for the Deputy.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It is very hard to put a finite number on it but even if there was a fairly broad list, all we need to do is establish that this is a non-runner in practical terms. That is my view. I think that going to 68 is not dealing with the realities for people in my constituency. We need a lot of examples of why and how this is not real-world stuff. As I said, we have to take into account that we are talking about the work period from the late 1980s onwards, perhaps 1988 if we take 40 years as being the number of contributions people have, so there is no point talking about work practices of the future or even of the 2020s. It is from 1988 onwards and we know what the work was like out there. It is just to give us more of a flavour because it baffles me, personally, how anybody could suggest this if they had day-to-day experience of dealing with people who are working in these types of professions. It is something that worries me about this report in that it just seems to miss so many of the people I meet every day and the condition they are in, and I am just talking about people who come in to me off the street with all sorts of problems, not all of them pension-related, and the physical shape they are in.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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We all deal with those on a daily basis. I call Mr. Berney.

Mr. Liam Berney:

I agree with the Deputy. To be clear, both SIPTU and Congress do not agree with an increase in the pension age. We are on the record and our submissions to the commission reflect that. Both in our submissions to the commission and also in the meeting that was held with the commission and with stakeholders, we made very substantial points around the issues that the Deputy is highlighting about arduous work. To some extent, the commission has acknowledged that but whether it has done enough to recognise the problem that Deputy Ó Cuív is identifying is an open question. Like SIPTU, we will try to see within our own organisation whether we can help the Deputy in what he is trying to do and supply it to him. He is right. There is a range of occupations across the country where it is unthinkable that people would be asked to work well into their 60s. While in a previous contribution I referenced the use in other jurisdictions of classifications of occupations, I am not saying that is an approach that Congress supports and I was just using it by way of an example of what is used in other jurisdictions. As Mr. Taft has pointed out, in a factory it could be that different types of classifications have different experiences, so it would be a very difficult approach to take. I was merely pointing to it as an approach that has been taken in other jurisdictions. We will try to identify if we have within our own organisation any information that would support or help the Deputy in the analysis he is trying to undertake.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Thank you. I think Ms Duffy is safe enough. I do not think Deputy Ó Cuív will be looking for her job any time soon. I think the people of Galway West are adamant to keep him in that particular position. I ask Ms Duffy to address his points and perhaps make reference to the fact that, in terms of manual work, many carers would come across that on a daily basis.

Ms Clare Duffy:

It is always nice to be on the same page as Deputy Ó Cuív. I want to acknowledge all of his points. As he said, everything that he has in his paper, I have in mine, so that is good.

The big frustration with regard to the IQA is that there is an anomaly. Even though people are getting a contributory State pension, which is not means tested, the IQA is. The other thing that is incredibly frustrating is that it is based on the assets. In my experience, it is having assets that causes someone not to satisfy the means test for the IQA.

Very often it is farming families. It is the fact that people have the land that often pushes the wife out of eligibility. It is the assets as opposed to the income that concerns me.

Deputy Ó Cuív referred to inheritance and how getting a lump sum affects pension entitlements and the children in the family, in particular where there are significant care needs. There was a very welcome announcement in last month's budget. I thank the committee for its work in highlighting the issue through its submission. The budget increased from €20,000 to €50,000 the capital disregard for carer's allowance. I have done the calculations for families and this will make a major difference to some families who have a few bob in the bank. If the disregard could equally apply to the non-contributory State pension, it would make an enormous difference.

In terms of the distinction between long-term carers and carers who care for a shorter period, I am satisfied that the current safety nets – the homemaker's scheme and the home caring periods – are sufficient to protect shorter term carers, for example, people who are caring for their mum or dad for two or three years. The cohort we must support is what the commission calls long-term carers – I call them lifetime carers – because they have dedicated their life to caring.

One point I have not mentioned, which is important, is awareness about pension entitlement. It was one of the recommendations that we made to the commission and it has been reflected in the report. At the moment, people only get a PRSI statement if they take the time to log on and request one. Once they get it, they would need to have a PhD to interpret it and understand what it means. We have called for a more regular PRSI statement that would be automatically sent to people, perhaps when they reach the age of 50 and again at 55, so that if there are gaps, they can plug them and do something about them. The PRSI statement should not be sent in its current format but should be interpreted a little more. I appreciate that would require resources.

The Chairman mentioned the manual aspect of caregiving. We have done countless reports in Family Carers Ireland which show the enormous physical, mental and psychological impact of caregiving. I do not know the statistics off the top of my head, but we have figures that show the physical impact of caregiving, which is enormous. I do not mean it in a disrespectful way, but carers do not have the luxury of retiring. As long as their caring responsibilities continue, it does not matter if they are 66, 68 or 69, they still will provide that care, very often until their body simply gives up. It is a highly manual, physical task. Retirement ages do not count in the sector I work in.

Photo of Claire KerraneClaire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses who have come in for their contributions. I apologise for my late arrival. I had another meeting which clashed with this one. Everything comes on one day. I apologise in advance if I ask a question that has already been addressed. If I do, I ask the witnesses to let me know and I can watch the discussion later.

SIPTU especially, but also ICTU, raised the cost and the savings. This is an issue we must address once and for all because it seems there is no real clarity and different people are saying different things about savings. Do we know what has been saved due to the gap from 65 to 66 since the State pension transition payment was abolished? What has been paid out in either jobseeker's payment or benefit for 65-year-olds versus what would have been paid out if they had received the State pension transition payment? This is an important issue. We must all be clear on precisely what the savings are, and potentially how much, if anything, we are looking to save by increasing the State pension age. That is something we must examine very closely.

I was somewhat surprised by the recommendation made by the Commission on Pensions, which has at least recognised the need for a State pension at 65 in some cases. Unfortunately, it has coupled that with the caveat of where the pension age is increased. It is important that the commission at least recognised that, at 65, some people will need to access the State pension. ICTU and SIPTU referred to that specifically. Will the witnesses speak a little about that? Perhaps Mr. Taft could speak specifically to employer PRSI and where we are at in that regard compared with the rest of the European Union. The commission has put forward various potential increases in regard to PRSI across the board.

Both ICTU and SIPTU mentioned the abolition of mandatory retirement and the fact that we do and should allow people who are willing and able to continue to work to do so and accrue PRSI contributions. In some cases, they may not have the necessary PRSI contributions to get a full State pension. That is important.

The next issue I raise is directed specifically to SIPTU and Ms Ryan. There seem to be a lot of blockages when it comes to banning mandatory retirement ages in contracts. Twice, the Dáil has unanimously passed legislation to make provision for this but it has not gone any further. As regards ensuring we get this done, are there issues with these contracts being private and with the retrospective nature of the legislation? I presume Ms Ryan plays a role, if not the main role, in bringing cases to the Workplace Relations Commission involving people who are forced to retire at 65. How much of an issue is that for workers?

We all welcome that the commission has been clear on the need for a State pension for long-term or lifetime carers, as Ms Duffy calls them. The Minister seems to be fairly adamant that she wants to get this introduced. The last time she spoke in the Dáil on this, which was around budget time, she said it would be done within the next two years. I will look at that again. It is clear that this matter needs to be addressed. Does Ms Duffy know if the total contributions approach is having a positive impact on carers? That measure was introduced to get rid of averaging and especially for people who have gaps in their contributions. What we need to look at before it is fully rolled out is whether the total contributions approach is working for carers. If not, we need a State pension for lifetime carers as quickly as possible. How quickly could it be introduced? Has there been engagement between Family Carers Ireland and the Department or the Minister specifically on the need for this State pension? That would be important.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I might ask Ms Ryan to reply first, as there were some specific questions addressed to her.

Ms Rachael Ryan:

The banning of retirement ages in contracts is not something SIPTU sought, mindful of the fact that we have a diversity of workers within our membership which reflects workers within society. There is a strong view among some of our membership that they want a retention of a retirement age because they are not going to have the ability to work on. The difficulty that has occurred is that there has been what I would describe as a blunt instrument in this area, in that the ability to impose a retirement age has been given over to private sector employers. European law in the first instance says we cannot discriminate against somebody on the grounds of age. That would include imposing a retirement age on them. If I could, I will quote from the equality framework directive.

Notwithstanding Article 2(2), Member States may provide that differences of treatment on grounds of age shall not constitute discrimination, if, [importantly] within the context of national law, they are objectively and reasonably justified by a legitimate aim, including legitimate employment policy, labour market and vocational training objectives, and if the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary.

What we have encountered in the private sector, in some employments, is that there is a blunt instrument given over to employers to impose a retirement age. As my colleague, Mr. Taft, referenced, within some employments, there can be a variety of jobs but, in our experience, there will not be a variety of retirement ages.

To be clear, we did not look for the abolition of retirement ages to try to balance that. The title of our submission to the commission reflects the need for flexibility within our pensions system. There are workers who will not be able to continue working past the State pension age, whether because they have no desire to do so or because they do not have the ability. We have talked about physically arduous work and its physical effect on workers. That needs to be balanced against the situation of workers who have given 30 or 40 years of service to an employer and have the ability to continue working but are told they have to leave because they have reached a particular age. The psychological effect can be strong for a worker in those circumstances. That is why we asked the commission and are asking this committee, as Deputy Ó Cuív referenced, to examine the provisions in legislation regarding mandatory retirement ages. It is our strong argument that such a review must include the employment and social policy considerations and should not be passed entirely over to private sector employment.

Regarding cases before the WRC, there are several workers, as I said, who have had their retirement age imposed on them. Coupled with the abolition of the transitionary State pension at the age of 65, this has meant that some people felt they were, in effect, caught between two stools or thrown on the scrapheap, whichever language is best to describe it. Within our union, we saw a sharp increase in the number of cases being put into the WRC because of that particular issue. I refer to the figures set out in our submission. In 2013, 52 cases were referred to the WRC on the ground that a person had been discriminated against because of his or her age. In 2014, that figure went up to 64. There are no data available for 2015 but the number increased in the following three years to 127, 161 and, in 2018, to 714. This sharp increase was because people were being caught in a situation where their retirement age was imposed on them and, in turn, the transitionary State pension was not available to them. That is why, as part of the suite of measures we set out in our submission to the pensions commission, we have asked for that area to be reviewed.

Mr. Liam Berney:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. Like our colleagues in SIPTU, we did not argue for a ban on retirement age in employment contracts for the reasons set out by Ms Ryan. We argued in our submission to the pensions commission that there should be a recognition of long contribution records. If a worker has an extensive contribution record over his or her period in work, that should be recognised by way of early access to the State pension. To some extent, the commission has travelled that road with us. It has recommended that people should have access to the State pension at 65 providing they have a particular level of contributions. We would argue that the commission has pitched the level of contributions a bit too high, which is something the committee might look at in its review of the commission's report.

I completely agree with Ms Ryan on the point around why there was an increased referral of cases to the WRC over the period to which she referred. It was because, at that particular point in time, people were beginning to be caught in the clash between their retirement age and the availability of the State pension. It is important that the Oireachtas takes action to implement the recommendation of the commission that the retirement age contained in a retirement contract should at least be the same as the age at which people have access to the State pension. Recognition of long contribution records is an issue to which we also should give attention. It is an important consideration.

Ms Clare Duffy:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. She asked whether the total contributions approach is working well and whether we had engagement with the Department on that issue. Family Carers Ireland published a paper a number of years ago on the State pension and carers, called Mind the Gap. The best way I can describe the TCA is that it plugs some but not all of the gaps that are there. We have already talked about the increase for a qualified adult and the issues around that, as well as self-employment versus employment. The TCA plugs some of those issues but not all of them. The major issue it does not plug is the requirement to have 520 paid contributions. It does nothing for carers who do not achieve that. Addressing that issue is what is so attractive about the recommendations the pensions commission has made about moving forward. Those recommendations do two really important things. First, they allow for gaps in people' employment record extending beyond a limit of 20 years to be filled. The interim TCA has a limit which makes it as though caring does not happen after a person has done it for 20 years. It just ignores a situation where there have been 20-plus years of caregiving. The new scheme would recognise those additional years. It would also allow Exchequer-funded contributions in respect of caregiving periods to be counted as part of the 520 contributions. It abolishes the 520 benchmark, which is at the heart of all of this. In short, yes, there are improvements to the TCA but it certainly does not plug all of the gaps.

The Deputy asked whether we have had engagement with the Department. We had a really good engagement with the pensions commission. We were perhaps one of the few organisations that was invited to make an oral submission, which we did in February. In terms of engaging directly with the Department on pensions and a carers' register, that has not happened yet. One of the commission's recommendations refers specifically to the establishment of a register of carers and notes that this could be attached to the national carers' strategy. The revised strategy was due to be published by the Department of Health this year but has been delayed. As far as I am aware, scoping work has not yet begun on a new strategy. If the establishment of a carers' register is going to be an action contained within that, I am worried about the timelines. This issue must be treated with urgency and it does not have to sit under the national carers' strategy.

Photo of Paul GavanPaul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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I thank all the witnesses. This is the best committee meeting I have attended all year and I am a member of a couple of committees. The quality of the contributions and the data we are getting are absolutely key. I want to address a couple of points that were raised.

Deputy Ó Cuív spoke about people in the real world, the arduous labour they do and whether their situation has been addressed by the commission. I do not know whether it has but I know Ms Ethel Buckley, who is a member of the commission, has spent years campaigning on the issue of the State pension age. She was instrumental in the STOP67 campaign, which had a huge impact at the most recent election. I have no doubt she would have raised this issue.

The real question I would ask is whether the other commission members were listening or how in touch they were in terms of real world people. Let us think about this for a second. There are 180,000 people working in the hospitality sector, including hotel housekeepers, cleaners and caterers. There are also healthcare assistants and home helps. Most of the people I have listed are women. Sometimes we think of arduous labour and assume it involves men in meat factories or construction, but a multitude of women workers have arduous jobs. To quote Michael Taft, are we really going to say to them after a lifetime of work that they have to continue working because they are not going to get their pension? I do not know about the Chair, but I was most struck by the data around healthy life expectancy, which is ten to 12 years. That brings it home. According to the Pensions Commission, we are perhaps likely to tell people that we are going to take two of the last ten or 12 years of healthy life because we will have to make them work longer.

At a committee meeting a couple of weeks ago, it was stated by the Department that we have to be realistic. My questions are for my colleagues in SIPTU. Workers have worked incredibly hard in physical jobs across all of the areas I have mentioned. I have not even mentioned the front-line heroes and people who have kept the economy going over the past two years, including those working in food production, warehouses and meat factories. Are we really going to say to them that they are going to lose two years? How realistic is it to expect people to do that work for another two years? Is it more realistic to consider a different combination of changes to ensure our pension system meets the people who need it?

Mr. Michael Taft:

I would like to come back on a couple of questions Deputy Kerrane asked. On whether it is realistic, the argument is that the fiscal urgency is so profound and potentially so dangerous to our public finances that we have to sweep aside some of the concerns over social equity. Insofar as it would not be realistic to ask somebody to work for longer in particular occupations, unfortunately, the hard realism is coming from a fiscal perspective which we believe has not been adequately justified. As long as the fiscal argument is telling us we must do this or otherwise our public finances will be in terrible shape in ten, 20 or 30 years' time, this is what will be imposed on working people. We are particularly sensitive to that in SIPTU because most of our membership comprises low and average income earners, primarily in the manual sectors, construction, mining and cleaning. We are especially sensitive to their work and the fact that when some people say we have to get realistic, it is usually sort of people I have mentioned who end up paying for that realism.

I will respond to Deputy Kerrane. She mentioned there was little or no clarity. In our earlier discussion, we talked about the distinction between the different models and why it might be helpful to the committee to investigate that. I will make a further point. The commission did not give an estimate of how much its proposal would save. Its proposal is quite distinct from the modelling of the Department of Finance and Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. Its work was based on the previous legislation. The commission's work started with 2028 and worked on the basis of phasing things out over four years etc. That is quite a bit different from what the Department and council said. It did not cost that. If you are going to argue that we need to achieve fiscal sustainability when the main proposal in that regard is not costed, that is a deficit the committee may wish to look into.

A second issue is something we recommended in our submission that the commission should investigate. We do not know what net pension expenditure is. There is gross pension expenditure and net pension expenditure, and that comes after tax. Most EU countries report gross and net expenditure. The EU ageing tables include that. Ireland is one of the few countries that does not report that. Again, this is not a game changer in terms of pensions sustainability, but in countries that report it, there is a gap of up to one to two percentage points of GDP. The implicit tax rate in the legislative estimate by the EU Commission ageing report 2021 was about 15%.

We have to speak in terms of net expenditure. If the only figures used are gross figures and revenue is ignored, which will automatically come from having made that expenditure, then the analysis may be skewed. The Revenue Commissioners could do a sample analysis of the database for the committee.

On employers' PRSI, employers' social insurance is 50% of the EU average. This is not surprising because for years we have had a beneficial age demographic. We did not have as many older people as other countries and did not have to pay out as much in pensions. Therefore, we did not have to raise as much social insurance to pay for those pensions. That is going to change in the coming years. We will have to push that up incrementally. It is too early to say how high it will go – perhaps it will double – but there will be a significant and substantial increase in employers' social insurance if our demands for resources for pensions are consistent with our move towards an EU norm in terms of the number of older people.

People get confused about employers' social insurance. This can be collectively bargained and negotiated, not in terms of the rate set but the impact of the rate on employers. When workers bargain with their employers over, for example, a 3% pot of money during a wage round, they can decide to make a demand for a 3% pay increase or they can demand a pay increase of 2.5%, but also ask for sick pay, a maternity top up, a new pension or some other social benefit. In other words, social benefits, which employers' social insurance represents, are things trade unions negotiate. If we had a proper collective bargaining coverage, we could integrate the increases in employers' social insurance with the collective bargaining framework, something that employers and employees agree, and that would minimise the impact of increasing employers' social insurance on the economy.

Mr. Liam Berney:

Senator Gavan has highlighted some important issues that are very pertinent to the committee's consideration of this matter. They have been covered by Mr. Taft. I will not repeat what he said.

Photo of Joan CollinsJoan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change)
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I thank the witnesses. What Senator Gavan said was very informative. One other aspect which has not been mentioned is the fact a lot of pensioners work beyond the age of 65 because they want to work. Others do so because of poverty due to the fact they cannot afford to live on a pension and need to keep working to have an income to pay a mortgage or rent. Many pensioners have experienced an increase in rent in recent times. Many older people do not own their homes and may be paying high rents.

They need to stay on in work. They are looking at their income. That is an important point to make and it should be factored in.

We have been restricted in our debate on pensions. The Commission on Pensions had a narrow focus, which was on the basis of age, which it was asked to look at, as well as the fiscal part of it - the financing of it. That has pushed out the whole social contract. Even though it has taken on board some of those social contracts, it could not take others, as it said itself.

Mr. Taft mentioned PRSI and the collective bargaining aspect of it. Will he explain that a bit more? Is he saying he could collectively bargain with employers for a 5% increase in the PRSI levy for employers, but that 2% of that would go into something specific? I want some clarity on that. Where I think the whole process has fallen down is in the issue of universal old age pensions, which the Citizens' Assembly has raised, to deal with inequalities. We know child benefit is the only the universal benefit that we have in this country and it plays a key role in supporting children. I would like Mr. Taft's opinion on the universal old age pension. It was raised in many submissions as well, as far as I remember from reading briefly through some of them. We raised that as an alternative. In New Zealand, you get a universal pension after 20 years’ residency. I would like any of the speakers' opinions on those points.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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We will start off with Mr. Taft, as there were some direct questions to him. We will then let the other speakers in.

Mr. Michael Taft:

Specifically on the employers’ social insurance, for clarity’s sake, and I apologise if I did not make this clear, the Government sets tax and social insurance rates. For something as fundamental as substantially increasing employee social insurance, you would need a consensus about that. This is because it would have quite an impact. You would need to get a consensus between employers and employees, especially in the phasing in, because this could not be done overnight. It would have to be phased in over years. The employers' PRSI might go up 0.5% this year, next year, and the year after that. In each of those 0.5% stages, that would factored into the collective bargaining arrangement. This is because that 0.5% represents part of the employee’s compensation. That is the part where it is negotiated. Employers’ social insurance and employee’s compensation are part of the whole package. That would have to be taken into account in a collective bargaining arrangement. I said this before when I used the examples of company benefits, but it can be squared around between wage, benefits and all that. That is why if we had, which we unfortunately do not, a robust sectoral or national collective bargaining framework, that would make that much easier. It could be done in such a way that is the least disruptive to business and economic activity. While the Government would set it, how it would be implemented at the workplace level would be collectively bargained.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Does Mr. Berney want to add to that?

Mr. Liam Berney:

I completely agree with Mr. Taft that there is a role for collective bargaining here. In one of the sectors where there is a sectoral employment order, which is in construction, there is a mandatory requirement for employers to pay into an occupational pension scheme on behalf of the people they employ. Collective bargaining has produced an occupational pension that sits alongside the State pension for those workers.

It is important to say as well that one of the things we put in our submission to the Commission on Pensions, as did SIPTU, I think, is the roll-out of auto-enrolment in pensions and the introduction of mandatory pension contributions across the economy. One of the statistics that is a real problem for us at the moment is the fact the majority of workers within the private sector have no occupational pensions. That is one of the reasons people might have no choice but to work beyond the age of 65, 66 or whatever the State pension age is set at. The roll-out of auto-enrolment and the requirement, like there is in the construction sector, that employers make a mandatory occupational pension contribution for workers is important.

The question of the universal pension is a complex one. I do not think we could do justice to a discussion on the universal pension in the short time we have available to us here. From the perspective of the ICTU, we favour the model that exists, which is contributions and entitlement.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Does Ms Duffy have a view?

Ms Clare Duffy:

I acknowledge the Deputy’s comments about the social contract. It is important in recognising the poverty that older people experience. We see that all the time. On carers and the social contract, this is about how we recognise, value and support carers. The Commission on Pensions’s terms of reference only asked it to speak about one aspect that social contract, which is a carer's eventual entitlement to a pension. The commission makes three recommendations for carers. In the second recommendation, it makes it clear that Exchequer paid-for contributions the State will make on behalf of long-term carers are for pensions purposes only. They will not give the a carer an entitlement to any other benefit scheme within social welfare. That is a very important point and I will leave it at that. Deputy Collins is right that the broader social contract is about more than just pensions, yet the Commission on Pensions makes it clear that its recommendation is only for the pension, which cuts carers off from other important schemes.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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First, I reiterate that I am fully aware that Ethel Buckley was not in agreement with raising the pension age. I therefore know I am speaking to people who are of the same mind as me. Let us get that on the record again.

I am fascinated with the debate on affordability and our choices, as though PRSI and social welfare were self-financing arrangements. They are not, of course. For many periods, and I am not talking about the crisis periods in more recent times, such as in the past two years, but about when pensions were initially introduced, the Exchequer always contributed to the pension. Not only that, there was a much higher percentage of non-contributory pensions in those days than there are now. This is because a higher proportion are getting contributory pensions. The non-contributory was always 100% Exchequer-funded.

The world is our oyster in how we fund this. We could raise PRSI. I would argue to people and to anybody who comes to me that PRSI is probably the best value pension policy ever bought into. We are saving at today’s rates. I often say I started working for £16 per week. Then, I was paying the same percentage in the stamp duty. It was a physical stamp in those days. It would not put much into my pension fund now. The great thing about the pay-as-you-go system is that it is in today’s money today. You are getting paid back out in today’s money because somebody else is funding in. That is one way.

The second way that is obvious and is mentioned in the report is that the PRSI self-employed rate be increased because it is, on average, actuarially the steal of the century in value terms.

The third way is that we honour the promises that we gave - I was there and the Chairman was in opposition - when we said that the USC was a temporary phenomenon and that we would replace it by putting more into the social solidarity fund if necessary. It was to be a temporary expedient to get us over the crash.

There is also Exchequer funding. One could hypothecate any amount of funding that could be sourced from wealth or whatever and, therefore, that sourcing would not hit the ordinary person. Some €10 billion in Exchequer funding goes in every year, including this year. Exchequer funding into the social welfare system amounts to slightly less than 50% of the overall system.

In looking at the whole maw, what is the right decision for pensioners and those who are ageing in society? How do we respect them? Let us then see how to fund that decision without limiting how we do so. Why constrain ourselves with arbitrary rules? I would be interested in the witnesses' views.

It seems that what is being proposed is being justified on some principle of social solidarity. Thankfully, the majority of people who are young now will get old, so it is not really a question of intergenerational solidarity. Young people are being told that, if they are generous today, they will get their turn tomorrow. They are not being told to give and that they will never get it back. They will of course get it back when they reach the necessary age. Unfortunately, it creeps up on us all a little faster than we thought. In my opinion, social solidarity with older people means someone who reaches that age cannot be automatically expected to work, can retire and still have a modicum of income, and social solidarity from my generation to the younger generation should be that we insist on affordable housing, good childcare and elements such as Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grants. I mention the last two elements in particular, given that children are our future. In other words, I do not believe that this version of intergenerational social solidarity is the paramount one. It is a reordering of our society in a much wider way than just penalising age. I would be interested in knowing how the witnesses view this point in terms of helping people of working age, particularly those with families. Let us be honest about it, in that children are the future, so if we are really interested in intergenerational sustainability, we must make them affordable, to put it bluntly in economic terms. Are we overly confining this debate about what we fund, how we fund it and how we realise intergenerational solidarity compared to the way it seems to be laid out in the report, which proposes that we do this not because we would like to do so but because we must do something for younger people and cannot put the burden on them? It would not be put on them, though. If they make a small extra contribution, it would be like they were putting that into their own private pension funds and reaping the benefit when they got to 66 rather than 68 years of age. According to social statistics, the vast majority of them will get there.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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We now have with us Dr. Laura Bambrick, senior policy and legislative officer with ICTU. I welcome her to the meeting. I will let her contribute first if she wants to respond to some of the comments that have been made.

To follow on from Deputy Ó Cuív's points, the evidence that we have received this morning is that people on lower pay and in manual labour, women in particular, are disproportionately impacted upon by the increase in the pension age. We also know from the evidence given to us as part of our hearings that people on higher incomes benefit disproportionately from the tax relief on pensions. Is there a need to examine that relief and share it out in a more equitable way towards meeting the cost of State pensions?

In his evidence, Mr. Taft made the point that the healthy life expectancy was, on average, 12 years after the age of 66. Sadly, that may fall temporarily due to Covid-19. Is there merit in tying the retirement age into that benchmark? If it increases or decreases over the generations to come, could that be the benchmark used for determining the retirement age so that the average person would be guaranteed ten to 12 years of healthy life after retirement?

Ms Duffy made the point that 70% of carers were also in employment. Would she be prepared to comment on a question that I raised with the Minister for Finance on the floor of the House recently regarding the incapacitated child tax relief? The Minister referred to the 2009 Commission on Taxation, which recommended that this relief be removed, but Ms Duffy made the point that it could be used to help compile the carer register. Clearly, there is some thinking within the Department of Finance that we should be considering removing reliefs in respect of incapacitated children and older people.

I will start with Dr. Bambrick and then invite the other witnesses to conclude.

Dr. Laura Bambrick:

I thank the committee for its patience in waiting for my arrival.

I will take the questions on the unforgone tax collection around occupational and private pensions. As with other issues around universal pensions that have been raised during the short time I have been at this meeting, this was outside the scope of the commission but I have no doubt that it will be closely examined by the ongoing Commission on Taxation and Welfare. We must remember that the policy objective of the State pension is just to keep people out of poverty. It is not about meeting their normal living standards. As such, it is important that people not only have access to the State pension but also to a top-up, be that an occupational pension or a private pension, so that they do not have a significant collapse in their living standards when they reach retirement age. While there are improvements to be made in tax-free allowances around second-tier pensions, we must recognise that they meet an important policy objective in and of themselves. That will be part of ICTU's submission to the current commission.

The question on linking the pension age to demographics was recommended in previous pension policy, in that, in 2035, which will be seven years after the pension age eventually reaches 68 years of age in 2028, we would start to link the pension age to demographics. As life expectancy extended, so would the pension age.

The assumption would be that if life expectancy stalled or reversed in some way, we would have a corresponding change in the pension age. The issue that unions have always had with that is that life expectancy increases but they do not happen universally. We can see from health research done by Trinity College that there is a difference between the poorest and richest parts of the country of six years and four months for women and seven years for men. If we are going to link the pension age to demographics, we must recognise that while we all might, on average, be getting older we are not all getting older to the same extent. That would be the real concern for us. This is why Congress has for a long time pushed for what is recommended by the commission in that the State pension would not only recognise the number of candles on one's birthday cake but would also recognise the number of years that one has contributed into the system through paid or caring contributions. That would come into effect because we know, on average, that the younger one enters employment, the more likely one is to do hard, physical labour and therefore the more likely one is to die at an earlier age than a professional who is universally educated, in a non-manual job and, as Mr. Taft said, is going to live longer and have more years of healthy life.

Ms Clare Duffy:

Did the Chairman ask the question about the incapacitated child tax credits?

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Yes.

Ms Clare Duffy:

I would be shocked at the recommendation to get rid of any tax credit that supports working carer families at the moment. Family Carers Ireland has called for an entire reform and overhaul of the current tax regime and how that supports working carer families. At the moment we have four tax reliefs or credits for carers. We have the incapacitated child tax credit, which is €3,300. We have the home carer's tax credit, which has doubled in the last five years from €800 to €1,600. We have the dependant relative tax credit, which was only €70 but in the budget before last it was increased to €245. Finally, we have the tax relief on the cost of employing a home carer. There are so many anomalies and inconsistencies across those four tax reliefs or credits. For example, one can only apply or benefit from the home carer's tax credit if one is married or cohabiting and assessed jointly for tax purposes. I have often had a single carer ask me why he or she cannot have this tax credit. I do not have an issue with the suggestion to abolish the incapacitated child tax credit as long as it is done in the context of overall reform and the current system is made better for working carer families.

I will finish by repeating what I said earlier. The best way for us to secure a State pension for any family carer is to support him or her to remain in employment, where possible, because in many caring situations it is not possible. In order for these people to remain in employment, we need to support them with a robust and sensible tax relief system. I have no issue with that as long as the overall tax regime is reformed to make it better.

Mr. Michael Taft:

Deputy Ó Cuív has touched on the strength of what social insurance has the capacity to be in society. That is never more obvious than in the case of social insurance pensions. On the Continent, pay-related pensions are paid through PRSI or social insurance forms whereas we have a flat rate. They have a much more elevated and enhanced approach. That is important because social insurance is the ultimate in solidarity. It is the ultimate in insurances. We can talk about widening the pool and de-risking the population. We all rely on each other. We put in what we can afford and we take out what we need. It is the ultimate principle not only of solidarity but also of something that can transcend ages. Interestingly, after the general election the Red C poll asked people whether they supported an increase in the pension age, which was the third largest issue in the election, and two thirds of respondents were opposed to raising the pension age. The highest age group to oppose an increase were young people at 70%. There is a generational war type of commentary that we get in some parts of the debate. Something like this issue is an example of why some of that type of commentary, and I do not want to call it nonsense, does not really reflect what people believe.

On the point made by Deputy Ó Cuív, what I put in as a young person to fund - metaphorically - my grandfathers means that when I become a grandfather and retire, I will get supported. If I put in money to support somebody who is going on maternity benefit, I may not benefit from that but my partner and my family will. They put in money because I might rely on sickness pay. It is true that the Exchequer has had to give a subvention in three quarters of all the years since 1950 and since the Social Insurance Fund was taken up. I think there is an argument for making the Social Insurance Fund more robust and better able to withstand recessions in order that it does not have to rely on the Exchequer, although Exchequer funding will still be there. If it were not for the pandemic, the Government's budgetary papers in 2019 projected that this year there would have been a social insurance surplus of €2 billion, and in 2023 a surplus of €4 billion and an accumulated surplus of €15 billion. Social insurance brings in a fair bit of money and we can afford the expenditures. Given that SIPTU's analysis, and this seems to be confirmed by IFAC, is that pensions will not increase as a proportion of national income between now and 2030, we have time - we cannot be complacent - to come up with more fiscally robust measures that are socially equitable and build on the insurance principle that has been mentioned.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I accept, talking about the PRSI fund in and fund out, that it is only half of social welfare. Another €10 billion is funded by the Exchequer every year, including this year, but that has always involved non-contributory payments that are not paid out of-----

Mr. Michael Taft:

Yes. Those are Exchequer-funded and means-tested.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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We are all happy to pay into that even though, with the part that is not means-tested, a lot of us might not gain that much.

I am probably the only person in the room who can say that I am one of the generation of people for whom it makes no difference what is done to the pension age because they have already passed the magic number. They are the people who can afford this - not the young people for whom we are cutting off a long-term benefit. If they were asked whether a change in the pension age would make a difference, they might say "No" if they were selfish. The people who have already reached 66 years of age might want to pull up the ladder after them and say that it is tough on anyone who comes behind them. It is very prescient of the younger group to say "hang on a second" and to query the fact that they are being asked to get rid of the ladder just because they do not need it at the moment. It has actually inverted who might have a selfish interest in pulling up the ladder and getting increases in the pension as opposed to allowing people in the 66 to 68 age group to get it.

If, in 20 years, people find that such a thing is unsustainable, they will have to think it out again. There are many ways to think this out. It is not a one-trick pony. Having worked in the Department for a while, I have a suspicion that the terms of reference are written and it gets the answer it wants. It is a cynic's view of the world.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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That will be our job over the coming weeks.

Mr. Liam Berney:

My colleagues have touched on all the points I wanted to make. As my colleagues from Family Carers Ireland said earlier, if we were designing the system for the State pension today we would not start from where we are now. We would have a different system. In light of the commission's report, one of the issues that it is important for people to understand, or for the committee to reflect on, is that there is a strong sense of solidarity among younger people for the continuation of the State pension. As Mr. Taft said, in the poll published in one of the national newspapers last Sunday there was strong support among young people for the State pension and for not increasing the pension age.

It is important that we use this opportunity of examining reform to make a clear connection and give young workers who are beginning to pay into the State pension system some assurance that their contributions will result in them being able to get a State pension when, as Deputy Ó Cuív said, they come to the age they are entitled to receive it. This level of certainty has to be implicit in our State system. To have constant uncertainty about when people might receive the pension diminishes support for social solidarity. Certainly in the redesign of the system and whatever reform is undertaken following the commission's report, a crucial pillar in the design of the new system will be providing it for as long as we can.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I thank all of the witnesses for attending and for their constructive and positive engagement with the committee. Mr. Taft has agreed to furnish information to the committee as has Mr. Berney. The committee will seek from the Department of Social Protection the information that is pertinent to our consideration of the report before us. We will continue our deliberations on the report on the pensions commission at further meetings. The committee will now proceed in private session and will remain so until it adjourns.

The joint committee went into private session at 11.53 a.m. and adjourned at 12 noon sine die.