Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Ireland's pension gap has widened in the lifetime of this Government and the previous one. Women work outside home in fewer numbers with most getting paid less when they do. When it comes to retirement, women now typically have 37% less to live on than men. On 21 September the Taoiseach announced plans for a new pension strategy to be completed by the end of the year, including a five-year roadmap for pension reform. As Minister for Social Protection, he also committed to conduct an overall pension review that was to be completed by the middle of this year. It is now almost October and it is not known if that pension review has been completed, let alone published.

Many women who got up early in the morning for years to work or look after the nation's children are now entering an insecure impoverished retirement. They will have limited access to pensions because of low pay, poor conditions of work and having to take time out for caring responsibilities. Women who worked on family farms and in family businesses also do not have social insurance coverage meaning they are totally reliant on their husbands in older age. What steps will the Government take to analyse the differential impacts of pension policy for men and women? Will it redress these glaring, flagrant inequalities among pensioners currently in receipt of benefits?

Lack of access to the homemaker's scheme has led to experiences of severe inequality for an entire generation of women in the State pension system. The homemaker's scheme only allows for the backdating of pension contributions to 1994. What about all the women before 1994? Let us not forget the State-enforced marriage bar, which up to 1973 meant women had no choice but to give up their public service and Civil Service jobs when they got married. Tens of thousands of women are out in the cold and are forgotten. They do not receive equal treatment because of a sudden unfair cut-off point of 6 April 1994. This is simply not good enough; they deserve better. The Taoiseach has said he plans to reward work and enterprise in the budget and yet he has claimed that pensions for these women, forcibly barred from work by the State, would be too expensive. Indeed they should paid reparations and not a mere State pension. It is never too late to do the right thing.

Will the Government commit to backdating the homemaker's scheme to 1973, rather than this discriminatory cut-off point of 1994? When will the Government publish the review on the differentiated impacts of pension policy? Will this be published before any new strategy is conducted or will the Government continue its penchant for revolving-door Ministries that never seem to finish any jobs they start?

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