Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

That is fair enough but if they got married in 1963 they were knocked out for ten years. The only way in which the Minister can examine this to know who was precluded from continuing to work because of the marriage bar is to study the register. The Minister may laugh at this but one's occupation was registered there. Deputy Crowe is right, this is a fixed number that is probably reducing somewhat.

The Minister may well have to tackle this and he could ascertain the number of women and average the sum across that number or impute to them contributions for each year that they were precluded from working when they could have worked. If they got married in 1967 and came back into the workforce in 1974 they lost six or seven years. That would amount to 364 contributions which should be assigned to them because the State precluded them from making the contributions. There are a few ways of calculating this. I accept the point and will not press the amendment but this will come back to haunt somebody.

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