Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

I asked the Pensions Board to examine these issues and it did so professionally by considering the facts and figures and presenting me with a report which I took to Government. The Government ordered a second report to deal with the mandatory aspect of it and we have already started to implement aspects of the first report. We are committed to flushing out the remaining issues through the Green Paper process and making urgent progress on pensions, particularly the occupational side. Many of the proposals I heard on pensions were familiar to me from the Pensions Board report that I commissioned last year.

The State pension is currently about 35% of gross average industrial earnings.

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