Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I would like to reinforce the point. Everybody accepts that firefighters, prison officers and Army personnel do extremely difficult, arduous and sometimes very dangerous jobs and that it is entirely fair and reasonable that they retire earlier. They should not be penalised more than others because of the nature of their jobs. Judging from the tone of the Minister's response when this issue was raised on Committee Stage, he somehow seemed to think that because they have a shorter working life, they are getting an easier ride than everybody else and, consequently, it is somewhat more justified to put an excessive penalty on them in terms of the impact the new legislation will have on pension entitlements in the future.

The unions were very clear when they appeared before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service that these categories of public sector workers would be disproportionately hit in terms of their future pension entitlements after the passing of this Bill. They have not heard a convincing response to the contrary from the Government on that matter. The Minister should have taken this on board and engaged more with the unions.

Maybe the Minister of State can tell us definitively if the case they are making is wrong. This concerns their pensions so I would say they have a fair idea how they work and how this Bill is likely to impact on them. Is the Minister of State telling us that this is not the case and that they will not be disproportionately hit because they are pretty certain they will be, which would be unfair? It is bad enough that many low and middle income public sector workers will see the quality of their pensions degraded but it is even more unfair if particular categories of people, who do difficult and dangerous work, are excessively penalised by the measures contained in this Bill.

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