Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

It is a question on pensions and I anticipated it. There is no change in policy in respect of commercial partnerships and there is no change of budget in respect of commercial partnerships. Approximately 1,000 people applied for partnership under the scheme by showing that they were in partnership with their spouses. Generally, it refers to farm spouses. Of those 1,000 people, 579 cases have been decided on the basis of whether they qualify as a partnership. Some 508 of those were deemed to have a partnership in existence. Of those, 268 have applied for a pension. The rest have not reached pension age yet. These are people who qualify for the partnership and have applied to see if they qualify for a pension. Some 46 did not qualify because of the social insurance element. Some 87 were told they qualified, were put into payment but then it was discovered they did not qualify. We are talking about 87 individuals. This occurred because of an administrative mistake by the Department and I regret that it was made. Some 135 people out of 268 are in receipt of a pension. These are the accurate figures. Letters were sent by the Department last week that caused some distress to the people concerned. I regret the administrative mistake was made.

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