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

First of all, I refer to the first comment the Deputy made. When people pay into a social insurance fund they expect to get something back. The Deputy is in the business of expecting everybody over a certain threshold to give absolutely everything away so that they can pay for everything else, which is not fair. One puts something in and get something out. That is what a social insurance fund is for.

My job and that of whichever Government happens to be in office is to be responsible for ensuring that the system is fair and money is available to make sure that people have enough money to live on in their older years. That is in new system towards which we are going to move and what the public consultation we will launch later this year will involve. We are moving to a total contributions model which will solve the anomalies which I acknowledge currently exist.

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