Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

That is something we will explore. The point that was being made was that potentially there were certain anomalies in the system. While welcoming the homemaker's scheme, which the Minister introduced in 1994, she made the point that it excluded people like herself who had to give up their jobs prior to 1973 and that there was an anomaly in the scheme relating to the way PRSI contributions were worked out. I believe that the requirements to get a full contributory pension are that one must have accumulated 500 full PRSI contributions and have worked ten years before reaching the age of 55. This person claims that she meets both of those criteria but that the Department averaged the contributions over a 47-year period which meant that had she never worked prior to her marriage and only worked post-1998, which she did, she would get the full whack but because she worked prior to her marriage, she is being discriminated against. This is certainly an anomaly about which I have not heard an answer but I hear the Minister's point about accessing other revenue somewhere else.

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