Ms Mary Murphy:

We share those exact concerns. In fact, part of the Deputy's phrasing was something I meant to say earlier. We are talking so much about choice over the retirement decision. It cannot be a false choice. It cannot be that they are choosing to stay in because, otherwise, they do not have enough money to pay for the upkeep of their house, maintaining the car or whatever else. That is really important.

We were involved in the Stop 67 campaign, as was the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament. We saw how fervently and effectively older persons mobilised around that issue and made it a really decisive political issue that it was important to keep maintaining the State pension age. We are very committed to that. We are very concerned about the quality of the State pension. It has been identified by the State itself as the bedrock of income in older age. Some 30% of older persons get 90% or more of their income from social protection payments. Even in the higher income groups in older age cohorts, people are still getting 40% to 50% of their income from the State pension. It goes across all older age groups. People are really dependent on the State pension. It is very important and it is defining of what retirement is in Ireland.

We must maintain that quality and adapt the scheme to the changing nature of older age. We have talked about longer lives. The State pension was envisaged as a payment people would rely on for 15 years or so but it is now 20 or 25 years. One of the things we see is that older people are encountering new kinds of costs with longer lives. I refer to larger one-off costs. The State pension is very good at putting money in people's pockets for their everyday costs, including groceries and petrol. However, it is not great for when a person suddenly incurs a €2,000 bill to fix something or for replacing a car or furniture, which are new things people have to do in older age. I do not know if that is a bit of a tangent but we are seeing new financial demands on older persons and, at the same time, political pressure to reduce or weaken the State pension.

Another issue to flag is that, even accounting for our younger population, Ireland really has quite low spending on old age social protection compared with other OECD countries and other European countries. The amount of public expenditure going towards it is not really significant. We can afford to strengthen it and we can certainly afford to maintain it.