Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

By any standard this motion is very straightforward. It calls for the reinstatement of transitional State pension, the restoration of pre-September 2012 pension rights and a reduction in the number of contributions required to qualify for State pension, from 520 to 260. All these things are important and need to happen but central to all of it is the notion of pension and labour market equality for women. In a 2007 report, Pensions - What Women Want, the National Women's Council of Ireland repeatedly emphasised the need to engender the Irish pension debate. Gender, class and race are now recognised as the three main organising categories in society. We also know that these categories overlap and cut across each other to produce inequality, poverty, power and privilege. We see this very graphically in the ongoing pensions debacle where, as a result of a policy decision taken in 2012 by a Labour Party Minister, thousands of women are now actively discriminated against on the basis of their gender.

Deputy Burton's 2012 policy was, in essence, both gender and class blind. For example, it failed to take into account the fact that, for most women, childbirth, caring and homemaking take up huge parts of their adult lives and also require them to move into and out of the labour market. In hindsight, the 2012 changes to the State pension regime resembled something from another era when women's work inside the home was rendered invisible and of less value than participation in a male-dominated labour market. The recommendations in the Sinn Féin Private Members' motion seek, as a first step, to address this inequality.

At the very least, such changes, if adopted, would not only be beneficial for women but would also form part of an anti-poverty strategy in that they are also beneficial to the many low-income groups which experience cumulative labour market disadvantage and a subsequent high risk of poverty in old age.

The report from the Low Pay Commission on the over concentration of women in precarious work, which means low pay, uncertain hours and exploitation, is before the Cabinet. I urge the Minister of State to recognise the link between the structure of the labour market, the social welfare regime and the feminisation of poverty.

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