Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome this motion which the Social Democrats will be supporting. It begs the question of why this issue was not dealt with in the context of the confidence and supply agreement and, furthermore, why it was not dealt with in terms of the budget that we have just put through this House. One would wonder why Fianna Fáil would seem to have come to the issue so late in the day in terms of proposing solutions to this problem, even though I acknowledge it has been raising it for some time.

The changes introduced in budget 2012 by the then Minister, Deputy Joan Burton, have given cause for a lot of concern among many people, in particular women. It was said at the time by the Minister that, "a core principle of sustainable social protection systems in advanced economies is that citizens receive benefits in proportion to their contributions". That all sounds fine and perhaps people were misled by that but it is not what happened. The reality is that the changes to the bands in terms of qualification for a State pension impacts very negatively on many people and disproportionately affects women because they are far more likely to have engaged in irregular and low-paid work. In addition, we know that in the main it has been women who have taken time out of the workforce in order to engage in caring for their children or caring for other family members. Again, that is the reason it disproportionately affects women.

Added to that we had the prevailing circumstances of the time in recent decades. In the first instance it was the accepted norm that families would operate on the basis of a single income and generally have a male breadwinner. There was also the marriage bar and little or no support for child care. All of those issues conspired to give rise to a situation where women took time out of the workforce to look after families in the main and it would seem they are now being punished for having done that.

The changes that were introduced do not recognise the reality of life for many women who took time out. That reality of the need to make provision in the social welfare system is recognised in the subsequent homemaker's scheme. That is a very important scheme and it does recognise the principle that credit must be provided in terms of social welfare for those years taken out of the workforce. That principle has been accepted in the homemaker's scheme but, unfortunately, the Government seems to be not prepared to accept the principle in respect of qualifying arrangements for pension provision.

There is a solution. We know that it would cost an estimated €60 million this year to sort out the problem and it would be approximately €10 million in each year subsequent to that. That is possible. It is what this motion is calling for. What the motion does not do is identify where the money will come from. I want to identify where the money will come from because we know that in 2013 the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, gave an undertaking to this House. He promised to restrict tax relief on private pension pots to ensure that any tax benefit would be limited to a pension of no more than €60,000. A pension of €60,000 is very substantial. He promised to limit it but, unfortunately, he did not follow through on the promise. What he did was to introduce a minor change but he did not go the full way. That has resulted in a situation where Ministers and senior officials are now entitled to pensions of up to €100,000. What we need to do now is deliver on the promise made in 2013, make the necessary changes in this year's Finance Bill and that will provide us with a figure of €120 million to address this serious problem that has been created through the 2012 changes.

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