Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

The level of poverty among older people is below the general level of poverty because of transfers, fee schemes and the fact that most older people do not have mortgages to pay. From a technical point of view, and I stress the word "technical", older people are below the average level of poverty in the country. There is another measure of pensioner poverty that I acknowledge but it is not shown in other measurements because lone parents, for example, tend to experience higher levels of poverty than old people.

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