Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy will be glad to hear that this year we have spent an extra €200 million approximately on the additional pensioners who are reaching the age at which they qualify for a pension. We have a very positive demographic in terms of older people. We have more older people, and they are living longer. I do not know if anybody from the Technical Group attended yesterday’s meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection, where we spent two and a half hours going through the social welfare figures. Deputy Ó Snodaigh represented Sinn Féin for the entire meeting and the other parties were also represented. I explained in detail that we are spending more in significant areas of social welfare because, for example, we have more pensioners and we are paying child benefit to 600,000 households, comprising more than 1 million children. These are demographic pressures, due to our growing population, which we are meeting.

The Deputy should not be down on tax relief for ordinary workers on the average industrial wage.

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