Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not like to admit that I am ignorant, but I do not have a clue what report the Deputy is talking about and I am not aware of any being drafted. Therefore, I will be honest with the Deputy and tell him the current position. No more than in the Deputy's own office, this issue comes across my desk in my office in County Meath quite regularly. It has been raised by women in the past two years and will obviously accelerate in the coming years. The women in question, on reaching pension age, are being told when they seek their pension that they are not entitled to what they expected to receive and they are seriously aggrieved about it. When we consider the overall sum of €20 billion that comes out of the Department every year, we note that €7.5 billion goes towards pensions. It is a sizeable amount. An extra €200 million was added to the pot this year just because of the number of people who turned 66 years this year. The rate of payment, as the Deputy and all of us know, is based on a yearly average, a condition that was introduced in 2012.

I will not read what is contained in my written response because the Deputy already knows what it states. To do what the Deputy and I would wish to do would cost hundreds of millions of euro. Given that we were having a spat earlier about who would get an extra fiver or €2 per week, we are all aware that the money is not available to fix the anomaly in question. All I can do – I propose to do it later this year – is proceed to public consultation on moving the entire system to a total contribution system. I am told that we will be able to have the public consultation process in a number of months. A maximum period of 12 weeks should be sufficient to engage in public consultation with the industry, unions and affected individuals. More importantly, it is question of starting the development of an IT system that will allow me to move everybody's pension payment to a total contributions pension payment. The discussions we will have will involve some winners and some losers. That will be politically difficult because nobody ever wants to see anybody losing. We need to have a conversation collectively about how we will pay pensions, on what they will be based and how they will be calculated. As we all know, the pot of money from which they come is in surplus, but it will not be for the next number of years. It is a question of from where the funding will come. Much and all as I would love to tell the Deputy that I am going to fix the problem, we just do not have the money to do so now. I have to fix the whole pot as opposed to fixing the problem in question.

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