Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 7:

In page 14, between lines 21 and 22, to insert the following:“27. Three months from the passing of this Act, the Minister shall lay a report before the Dáil on the matter of extending the Homemaker Scheme contribution years that can be disregarded for the purposes of determining the yearly average of claimants who raised families in the years prior to April 1994.”.

I have had amendments ruled out of order on the basis that they would incur a cost on the State. However, unless we take the route of creating equality this matter, we may incur a further and larger cost on the State because the current legislation is open to challenge. Let me explain.

In 2012 a measure was introduced in this House by the then Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton. It gave recognition to what were called homemakers. They are usually women but sometimes men who leave their jobs during the course of their working lives. When their contributory pension is being calculated, the years over which it will be calculated will run from when they started to when they finished work. There is a chunk in the middle during which time they did not work because they were making a home. They were having and rearing children and all that jazz. That chunk will be taken into account in determining their average number of contributions during their working life and will bring their contributory pension rate right down. The then Minister brought forward a measure that would discard the homemaker years for homemakers post-1994. If a person left a job to make a home after 1994, when he or she comes to retire, the homemaker years will be disregarded in determining the average number of contribution during his or her working life.

This is where it is important. Other Deputies will speak about this issue, but Deputies all over the country may be familiar with it. There is a group of mainly women - there may be the odd man - who worked in the 1960s and early 1970s. Generally, in those days, many workers started work quite young at the age of 14, 15 or 16 years. They did not do the leaving certificate examinations, etc. They got married when they were perhaps 19 or 20 years old and spent the next ten, 15 or 20 years making a home and rearing their kids. They later returned to work. Some of the women with whom I am dealing went back to work as late as 1983, 1984 or 1985 and worked right up until last year and this year. They retired and applied for old age pension only to find out that, although they had consistently paid a full contributory rate towards their pension for the past 33 years, in calculating the average number of contributions the Department went right back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. This drags their average number of contributions way down. In the case of two women, Lillian and Jean, who retired in the past year, instead of receiving the top contributory pension rate of €230 per week, which is what they expected, they are receiving €209 a week. This is a considerable difference in the amount of money received when calculated over the course of a year and it will be considerably more over what I hope will be the many happy and healthy years yet to come.

There is clear discrimination against homemakers who made their homes in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as against those who did so post-1994 and have not yet retired.

I assume that when the Department wanted to bring this measure in to eliminate discrimination against women who became pregnant and reared children, it looked at when it would start impacting and when it would have to start taking the cost into account. Clearly, 1994 was chosen for a reason because around that time, it was clear that none of those homemakers from the many years before would have been in a position to retire. However, we are now coming across a tranche of homemakers who are retiring, have worked for the past 30 or more years and have paid good money into the system. They are being penalised because they got married in 1969 or 1970 and left their jobs for the next ten or 15 years. This has been dragged back up to average out their contributions. As a result, their contributions are being dragged down. If an amendment to rectify that had been allowed and had passed, it would indeed have occurred a cost to the State, but a justifiable one. Here is a clear act of discrimination against a certain section of society. I argue that it is an ageist discrimination, and I believe that we could probably prove that legislatively.

Over the years, I have listened to various organisations, such as Social Justice Ireland and the National Women's Council, etc., arguing for an equality-proofed budget, which would be a great idea. We have the opportunity to equality-proof this Department of Social Protection Bill. Unfortunately, there are many other inequalities created in the Department of Social Protection. Glaringly, the one that jumps out is the inequality and discrimination against young people on jobseeker's allowance. If one is 20 years old, one receives a payment of €100 a week. If one is 25 or 26 years old, one gets a bit more, and older people get more again. There is ageist discrimination against those jobseekers on different levels.

This measure is another ageist discrimination against those who are due to retire in this current period, and it will continue. There will be another ten or 15 years of homemakers retiring without the full pension until we catch up with the legislation that rectified that situation for the years after 1994. There is quite a serious breach of equality in the legislation and I believe we would be able to prove it is so, whether we have to go to Europe, the courts or to the pensions ombudsman. This is not going to stay where it is at present. That is why I have asked in amendment No. 7 that, three months after the passing of the Bill, the Minister would lay before the Dáil a complete report on the homemaker scheme and the contribution years that can be disregarded for the purposes of determining the yearly average of claimants who raised families in that period.

I can well understand the anger, disappointment and feeling of abandonment by this State of those women who have just turned 65 or 66 years of age and find themselves at a huge disadvantage, having worked hard and consistently for the previous 30 or 35 years, before which they had worked really hard and consistently rearing their children, and before which again they had gone out to work early as young women. As I said, there is probably the occasional man in that group as well but, by and large, this is discrimination against women on ageist grounds and possibly on gender grounds also. We really need that report and we need to look at it carefully. In the meantime, because the original amendment was ruled out of order, we will do what we have to do, whether that is going to the pensions ombudsman, building a campaign or getting advice, because this is a serious breach in the social welfare legislation.

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