Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are two aspects to this issue. The rules we apply to working out a person's contributory pension entitlement are gender blind. As such, it does not matter whether an applicant is a man or woman because the same rules apply to both genders. While it is less common, men also have caring roles.

The Deputy is correct that there are gender gaps. However, as the independent actuarial analysis shows, when one takes everything into account the gender gaps tend to benefit women more than men because the former tend to live longer and are paid more from the pension fund as a result. Moreover, they generally pay less into the fund because they tend to work fewer years, often at lower pay rates. Some people want gender gaps to be closed when it would benefit one gender to do so, while conveniently overlooking such gaps when they benefit a different gender. I am not accusing the Deputy of adopting this position but it is the case that others are conveniently gender blind, depending on which gender is affected by an issue.

The only way to completely eliminate gender gaps would be to have different rules for men and women and I would not like to take such an approach. In fairness to the Deputy, she has not proposed such an approach. I acknowledge, however, that the pensions system needs to be reformed because it is based on working patterns that no longer exist in the modern economy. We are trying to replace the averaging system with a new system known as the total contributory approach, under which the main criterium will be the number of contributions a person makes, rather than when he or she makes them.

The Deputy is correct that it is unfair that a person can work for the final ten years before retirement age and receive a full pension, while a person who works for 15 or 20 years over a 40-year period may not receive a full pension. The difficulty is that any change will create losers and winners. It is in the nature of these things that one only hears about the losers when they discover they have lost out. Before introducing a reform, I want to have a detailed analysis done of all the individual cases in order that we can have a profile of who will be the winners and losers in the event of a change.

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