Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Once again, the House has before it a Fianna Fáil motion that addresses a very real issue, in this case one which impacts cruelly on 35,000 pensioners and there will be more in the future, who have had inflicted on them a cut of between €15 and €30 weekly. That is a lot of money over the course of a year, never mind over the course of however many years a person has left during their retirement. Again, we see a motion that appears to address the real issue and I have no doubt that many of the pensioners outside the House and in the Visitors Gallery believe that Fianna Fáil is addressing the cuts which have been inflicted but that is not the case. To misquote Shakespeare, in common with many Fianna Fáil motions this is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It cannot deal with the core issues because Fianna Fáil is supporting the Fine Gael Government which will continue to practice this discrimination and any changes it makes will be in terms of rearranging deck chairs, of appearing to be fairer. Crucially, it will not result in more State funds being spent, ensuring the savings achieved by Deputy Joan Burton's cuts will remain.

It is worth reminding ourselves of what those savings amount to. The Government abolished the transitionary pension to which workers were entitled at 65 years, saving €75 million per annum, that is €75 million taken from pensioners; it changed the contributions necessary to be entitled to the pension which saved €50 million annually and €10 million year-on-year after that; and it extended our working lives incrementally, from 66 years, to 67 years, to 68 years and now its academics and advisors in the ESRI are suggesting that it be extended to 70 years. The Government continues the discrimination against women who raised their families prior to 1994. This motion and all its pieties and the pieties from the Government which talks about valuing our older population will not do what is necessary and the Government will not change what is happening. It will not do so because although Deputy Joan Burton and the Labour Party pulled the trigger, the gun was loaded by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the justifications which they gave to this move. They say people are living longer but that is not the problem; the problem is not that we do not put away enough money while working. The problem is the system of capitalism itself and how it prioritises profits over decent wages and public services. Even workers' defined benefit schemes in the most lucrative companies which make huge profits are under attack because the firms want to maximise profits.

I will finish by looking at what the Taoiseach said when he was Minister for Social Protection.

The Taoiseach, and then Minister, said when he was arguing this last year in the debate on the social welfare Bill, that it is unfair and needs to be changed but that any changes need to be financed from the same pot and that the pot is only so big and if some gain others must lose. I argue that the pot is the size it is for many reasons, not least because we have one of the lowest PRSI contributory rates from employers in Europe. Bogus self-employment is rampant in industries such as the construction industry, where the State is actually losing hundreds of millions of euro a year that could be paid in PRSI contributions. The Government will not take the Apple tax or the proper corporation tax. The Government will not try to increase that pot for pensions that determines the benefits pensioners get. The only thing that will really change the minds of this Government is what the pensioners did when Fianna Fáil attacked their medical cards. They gathered in their thousands outside here in Kildare Street. That rapidly changed the minds of the then Government. At the end of the day, we need to have a State that fully funds pensions for everybody through taking contributions from employers and employees in a just way across the board and delivers real services in health and transport and all of the community needs that older people have. That will not happen under the Minister's Government or, indeed, under a Fianna Fáil Government.

See this speech in context