Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

All of our focus on pay and pensions restoration has been on the lowest paid first. As I said it would be, that is and was the hallmark of the FEMPI legislation. We are providing for full pensions restoration for people who would have been on a salary of roughly €68,000 when they were working, which is the case for 80% of public servants. They will see full restoration of their pensions under the provisions we have enacted. Increasing the threshold to €50,000 would mean that we would be providing for full restoration for people whose salary would have been €100,000. We will need to go there eventually, but I did not set it as a priority in terms of the scarce resources I had available last year. As more resources become available, people are entitled to have their pensions restored as quickly as I can manage it.

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