Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In his comments yesterday, the Minister was referring to the marriage bar and the impact it had. It is almost impossible to believe that was in place up until the 1970s. I am acutely conscious of the problems women are experiencing in accessing adequate pension provision. We had extensive discussion on this as we formulated the National Strategy for Women and Girls 2017-2020, which I published in May of this year. The actions in that strategy include increasing women's access to pensions in their own right, improving their access to private and occupational pensions and assessing the impact any future reforms to pension policy in this area will have on women and taking actions if appropriate. That has been accepted by the Government in the national strategy in respect of dealing with this issue. In line with the national strategy the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, and I also launched a public consultation on tackling the gender pay gap in August. We need to drive a whole-of-Government agenda to deal with these gender pay issues, including the pension issue, female entrepreneurship, child care, skills, STEM subjects and so on.

This is clearly a complex issue. Of course we do not want to see gender discrimination in our pension provisions. It is a complex issue to resolve in the sense that we do not want to create any new anomalies which would discriminate against people who have a contribution history. The current rate plans applying to the contributory State pension were introduced with effect from September 2012 and reduced the previous rates which had been introduced in 2000.

These rate bands now reflect the social insurance contributions history of a person more closely than those that were in place between 2000 and 2012. It is estimated that to revert to the previous bands from January 2018 would result in a cost of more than €60 million in 2018, which would increase by an estimated €10 million in each following year. It would be expected to cost some €70 million in 2019. Spending this money on reverting to the old rates would not generally benefit the worst-off pensioners who are dependent upon the State pension. This is because the main beneficiaries would be those who have other income means such that they do not qualify for a non-contributory pension, which is 95% of the contributory pension. Given that the funds would come from the general pension provision, less well-off pensioners could expect to be worse off if such a course were taken.

The savings created by the new rate bands were an alternative to cutting the core rate of pensions at a time when Exchequer savings were required and other social protection payments were being reduced across the board. Had a similar approach been taken with pensions, affecting everyone over State pension age regardless of their means or their contribution record, the hardest hit would have been pensioners with no additional income, notably those paid a non-contributory State pension and widows and widowers living alone. A significantly higher portion of such pensioners are women and this approach would have been expected to result in more women over 65 experiencing difficulties in terms of income.

It is a complex issue and to resolve it is between €200 million and €300 million overall. We do not want to see gender discrimination and the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection is having ongoing discussions with the Minister for Finance.

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