Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This arises from legislation passed in 1997, which provided that the number of contributions required to qualify for pension was to double from 260 to 520. Budget 2012 gave effect to that and the legislation was passed in its wake and it has been sought to apply this to everyone from April of this year. We objected to this move at the time. We were lobbied by a number of individuals who were fast approaching retirement age, only to discover that their pension entitlement would be only a fraction of what they had expected.

This measure seems to affect women in particular. It seems the legislation overlooked some small categories of contributions and since April, some 540 people managed to qualify for the pension with only 260 contributions. What the measure does is ensure the exclusion of those categories from qualifying, unless they are able to reach the higher number of contributions. We favour a move towards a more universal basic pension. Therefore, measures that would further restrict eligibility move in the wrong direction. This measure only affects a small number of people. Given our opposition to it and given the effect it has had on people fast approaching retirement, we feel we should oppose this measure at this stage, although it will not matter so much in a number of years.

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