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

The cost of retrospective payment will be examined. To go back and recalculate people's pensions would be a very big job. If there is a significant change in the rules, we could recalculate the pensions of people who have already retired and tell them their pensions are being reduced. We are facing into people coming to us and saying they are not getting the pension they thought they would get. We would be in a very different space if we applied a rule change retrospectively and told people we were recalculating their pensions downwards. It speaks to my point that we need to understand how any change would impact on people. We could not have a situation in which we applied different sets of rules to different people. If we applied the rules retrospectively, there would definitely be winners and losers. I will not accept the amendment, given that what we are doing is much more comprehensive than this and, although it will happen during the first quarter of the year, I am not sure we can do it in within the three months. I outlined on Committee Stage and here what we intend to do.

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