Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said earlier, the first thing that had to be done was an actuarial review of the Social Insurance Fund because the way it works is that PRSI contributions go in and PRSI contributions go out. That is how the benefits are paid for. That was the first thing that had to be done. That has been done and it went to Cabinet a few weeks ago. The Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, will be in a position to publish, for public consultation, the new system, which will be the total contributions approach, and she anticipates being able to do that before the end of the year. As I mentioned earlier, none of these changes is straightforward. One needs to understand the costs involved, how they will be funded, how they will impact on different individuals, different groups of people and all those other matters. That is why it is not straightforward. The fact that there are no computerised records prior to 1985 makes it even more difficult because individual records - paper records - will have to be gone through.

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