Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In regard to the discrimination against pensioners discussed earlier, I and several others raised this issue when the Taoiseach was the Minister for Social Protection, and he acknowledged then that there was problem with the averaging and a problem with people who did not benefit from the homemaker's credit being discriminated against because it was not retrospective. He acknowledged that a long time ago, at least a year to a year to a half ago, in engagements that took place in this House involving Members from both sides of this House. How come it has taken him this long to act on this and when will he do something about it? By the way, in our budget submission, we allocated several hundred million euro for expanding the homemaker's scheme, so we did include it in our budget submission. The Taoiseach said he read them all, so he should know it was in our budget submission at least. He has given no clear commitment as to when he will deal with this discrimination against more than 30,000 pensioners, many of whom are women, although not all, as he said. It is a discrimination and unfairness, nonetheless, which he has acknowledged. He said then that he was going to do something about it but he has still done nothing about it. When is he going to do something about it?

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