Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)

I again register our objection to taking four or five resolutions together. It is not necessary to do that and it means that when we are in a position to agree on something with the Government, as with some of these, we cannot vote for it because we do not agree with lumping the resolutions together.

We have a serious problem with Resolution No. 5, which I will address, but I want to first comment on Resolutions Nos. 8 and 9. While the tax changes to the lump sum are welcome, most people have a problem with the lump sum itself, especially when they see the figures being paid out to retiring Ministers and various top civil servants. That is something not addressed in this budget bar through the tax system. The wrong message is going out on that but that is a separate discussion we can have during the debate on the entire budget. People become very annoyed when they see those lump sums being paid out at a time when they are struggling.

As a party we have a concern with Resolution No. 5. We proposed many changes to the pensions area in our alternative budget published last Friday. Some of them are very good but we tried to tackle the overall pension fund in a different way to individual people contributing into it. My concern is that this measure limits the amount of money a person can put into his or her pension fund in certain years. Fine Gael's proposal was to allow a person accumulate a fund that will give him or her an annual maximum pension of approximately €60,000 a year. We would discourage above that figure but we said we would facilitate a person accumulating enough of a fund to have a pension of €60,000 a year. That means that if a person is late starting to contribute to a fund he or she might not get a chance to accumulate enough money for that payment. The Government is preventing that.

In the current climate it is quite common for self-employed people to stop paying into their pension fund for several years because they just cannot make the contributions. They cannot even pay a wage, other than cashing in other investments and so on to survive. In a few years time when Fine Gael is in government, the country has recovered and those in self-employment have a chance to earn more money, they will be discouraged from putting money into their pension fund to pay out a pension to which they are entitled based on their years of work. This measure is unfair in that regard. It is penalising the wrong person.

The Government must realise the times in which we now live. Not everybody in business made money in the good times but certainly in recent years many people in business could not pay into their pension fund. They should be allowed to pay extra in years to come but they will not be able to do that because this measure will restrict them in that it will not be worth their while. It is a pity the Minister has lumped these resolutions together because we will oppose this one.

See this speech in context