Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The measures taken in recent months were obviously to deal with the current difficulties that have arisen and were not designed for the long term. The framework document will deal with the long-term issues. Other countries that have introduced long-term frameworks have set out a timescale for their commencement. For example, the UK measure will not start before 2012. The measures we will take, depending on the type of decisions we make, will obviously require legislation and a starting point that will not be this year or next. Given that it will have implications that will affect all workers for the next generation, it is important to get it right. The Green Paper was published at the end of 2007, but following on that there were some 380 submissions, various conferences and a number of meetings. I met with the unions, the women's council, the Senior Citizens' Parliament and various other groups that made submissions. We will shortly publish that long-term framework document.

As regards the Deputy's question about self-administered schemes, the Revenue does not collect specific data in that regard. The tax reliefs available amount to approximately €2.9 billion, as we know, but it does not have the specific data in relation to that because it claims the resources required would be disproportionate to the value of the work of Revenue. However, when Revenue carried out an audit of the schemes a very high compliance level was found.

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