Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In the spirit of the sneaky, clandestine and disgraceful cut that was imposed by Deputy Burton, the Minister has answered this question by attempting to baffle people with figures. He has sought to obscure the nastiness of the pension apartheid that was introduced by Deputy Burton in 2012. As a result of the changes that were made at that time, people who are now coming into their pension entitlements in the expectation of getting all or at least 98% of those entitlements could lose 15%, 35% or even 60% of the pensions to which they would have believed they were entitled before these cuts were made. The Minister mentioned the requirement to have made 520 contributions, but I remind him that this number used to be much lower. As a result, some people who believed they were entitled to the contributory State pension because they made contributions at the level that would previously have given them such an entitlement will not get a pension at all. I do not have enough time to go through the cases of this type with which I am familiar. A person in these circumstances might be entitled to apply for the means-tested pension, but the means test means they might not even get the non-contributory pension.

See this speech in context