Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy is aware, the Financial Emergency in the Public Interest Act 2015 provides for incremental increases in the threshold before the public service pension reduction, PSPR, applies this year from 1 January, next year and in 2018, ensuring that from 1 January 2018, all public sector pensions with values less than €34,132 will be exempt from the pension reduction.  This means that 80% of all pensioners will see no pension reduction within 24 months. The PSPR amelioration provided for under the FEMPI Act delivers on my previously stated commitment to reduce the burden of the FEMPI legislation for retired public servants at the earliest date economic progress allowed me to so do. The measures have been costed on a full-year basis in 2018 at a figure of €90 million.  In all cases the maximum pension restoration figure is €1,680 over the two-year period. The Deputy's proposal to increase the pension size threshold below which the PSPR does not apply to €50,000 per year would cost approximately €117 million per year.  In addition, those pensioners still affected by the PSPR, including the very highest paid, would secure a pension boost of €4,080 per year via the PSPR restoration.

I did not think it was the right thing to do to provide for that level of pension restoration for some people, of whom we would be very critical and who have walked away with very good pensions in the State.

Under section 12 of the FEMPI Act, I am required to review the necessity for the FEMPI legislation annually. Whoever sits in my seat will be required to lay the results of a new evaluation before the House next summer. All of these matters will be considered in that context.

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