Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Like other Deputies, I read the earlier version of the Bill. There are substantial changes between the draft and this version. The hate campaign and class bias demonstrated by the former Minister in his attempt to win the leadership of Fine Gael, the campaign for Leo, however, remains as an attack on those who are allegedly committing welfare fraud. The other striking change is in the means to be used to protect defined benefit pensions. The balance of changes made and not made says much about the priorities of Fine Gael and this Government.

It would be wonderful to see the Government devote the same outrage and energy to go after corporate fraud and tax evasion as it demonstrated in its campaign to go after social welfare fraud. Instead, it is spending millions of euro to protect the Apple tax owed to us. I am stating the obvious. There is less interest in collecting tax revenue from some sources than there is in hounding a certain set of welfare recipients that seem to preoccupy the Government, and particularly the former Minister for Social Protection, for some time. The campaign does not paint the reality. For example, I have come across a few people being examined for social welfare fraud. One family in Ballyfermot was examined in a confrontational and threatening way. The result of the examination showed that they received an overpayment of €60 per week. It was not said but this should come out in the statistics, the same family is saving the State a fortune by caring for an elderly parent on a full-time permanent basis. That woman should, or could otherwise, be occupying a bed and the services of the State but there is a family taking care of her and they are being overpaid a paltry €60 a week and were given a hard time.

Approximately a year ago I asked the previous Minister how much he estimated was unclaimed by people who were otherwise entitled to some sort of social welfare payment but he never answered. We do not seem to know or estimate what goes unclaimed in this State. When the UK began to estimate the unclaimed entitlements it found they far outweighed the levels of fraud in the social protection service. I think this would be the same in Ireland.

There are several steps that could have imposed some limitations and barrier on the widespread attack on defined benefit pensions. They would have put some manners or delays at least on employers withdrawing from the schemes and stopping others contributing to them. All of us here would have supported that and would like to see that happen because so many companies have moved away from defined benefit schemes. In many, as we have seen recently, the pension schemes are in surplus. They are very healthy. Two have been mentioned, Irish Life and Irish News and Media, INM. Workers at INM recently saw their pensions cut from an expectation of €24,000 a year, to €18,000, then €12,000 and some now expect approximately €6,000, having paid all their lives into a defined benefit scheme. The scheme, however, is in surplus. The same is true of thousands of workers in Irish Life. They are under attack and this is the subject of dialogue and negotiation with the union which should not be the case. Irish Life is the leading seller of pensions in this country. If it gets away with withdrawing from the defined benefit scheme all the other pension companies will follow suit. A pension of this nature is deferred pay. It is money owed to workers because it was taken out of their income, put away and allegedly invested. What is really going on is that pension companies are getting less and less return on their investments because they are investing in equities and bonds that are not paying what they used to because the system is yielding less. Instead of bearing the brunt of that because their profits are big enough they pass the cut on to the workers who are owed it. This is a savage attack. Legislation is needed, similar to that in Britain, which would stop any attempt by a solvent company to stop or reduce contributions to a defined benefit scheme. We hope to amend the Bill in the autumn.

I note the Citizens' Assembly has recommended that there should not be a compulsory retirement age of 65 and that the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has been quick off the blocks to say people should not receive their old age pension until they are 70. I hope the Minister will resist that sort of inverse attack on the old age pension because while there are workers who do not want to retire at 65 there are a hell of a lot more who cannot wait to get out of their dull, dreary and often physically taxing jobs and they deserve to be treated with more respect by the State.

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