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

There are a couple of points. If someone was a partner in a business, it should be easy enough to establish whether that person paid PRSI. If an individual did not pay PRSI, he or she is not entitled to a contributory pension. People do not get contributory pensions unless they pay PRSI. That is how a contributory pension works. It should be easy enough to establish their record if they paid PRSI. We have very good records in that regard. Once one has been paying PRSI for ten years, one is entitled to a contributory pension. If one did not pay, one is not entitled.

On the issue of the marriage bar, any public servant, male or female, recruited before 1995 is not entitled to a contributory State pension. Whether they are male, female, married or single, they are not entitled to it. A person might be entitled to a pension from the Department of Education and Skills - if he or she was a teacher or - the HSE or the Civil Service. However, a public servant recruited before 1995 is not entitled to a contributory State pension, whether they are a man or woman, married or single. The system was totally different then. They did not pay PRSI at the full rate. Therefore, they are not entitled to a contributory State pension.

Most contributory pensions work over a period of 40 years. If one worked two years, one gets two fortieths; if one worked ten years, one gets ten fortieths; and if one worked 40 years, one gets the full pension. The contributory State pension is very odd. One can get a full State pension after ten years, if one worked the right ten years, which is too little time. That is one anomaly. Conversely, one can lose out very badly if one started working very young, worked for a number of years and then had a big gap before going back to work again for a number of years. One might, having worked 20 years, get a lower pension than somebody who worked ten. Those are two anomalies and we will have to address them at the same time. One group will lose and another will win. I need to present the detail of those proposals to the House before we agree to implement them.

See this speech in context