Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I propose to take Questions Nos. 64, 78 and 79 together as they all relate to the same issue. I can give the Deputy the very long version or I can just give him the short version that I have already given. The Deputy is able to see the long version, which tells him exactly what we have done, where we are moving to in terms of the total contributions model and details the public consultation to which I have already referred in response to earlier questions.

In terms of action by my Department in the past couple of weeks, we are collecting the data of the tens of thousands of people who have had their situation exacerbated by the changes that were made in 2012. The reason for the length of time it is taking to collect that data is that all of our records prior to 1994 are paper records. They are not on the computer system which means we could not just do a data search. We had to go through all of the manual records. I wanted to ensure that when I sit down to figure out how we are going to fix this, the information in the report in front of me would be 100% accurate and I would know exactly who the 36,000 people are, what their circumstances are and what I need to do to fix matters. If we make a change, I want to know how many of the 36,000 it would affect and how many it would leave behind, so that we can make an informed choice. What I will not do is fix things for 20,000 people and leave 16,000 behind or fix things for 30,000 and leave 6,000 behind. We need to make sure that whatever changes we make address the anomaly in its entirety. It is also really important that we do not introduce a fix that causes an issue in some other area. I cannot be 100% sure about that when we sit down to deliberate unless I have all of the information so that is what is currently being compiled. We had a meeting yesterday evening and that process is very close to being finished. I would expect to be able to have a conversation with my officials before the end of the week and get that full report. I will bring that to Cabinet next week so that we can make decisions about what we can do.

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