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

There are a couple of issues. Anybody who has made 520 contributions or worked ten years from a working life of 40, 45 or 50 years is entitled to a State contributory pension. Those who did not work for that time may not be. What we had previously and we still have is a position where there is very little correlation between the contributions made and the pension that one gets at the end. That is the problem and it must be changed. We must introduce a new system involving total contributions that gives a person a State pension based on the amount of contributions made. If a person makes many contributions in a working life, that person would get a higher pension than those who made very few. Within that we must make provision for a homemaker's credit to recognise the fact that people take absence from work.

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