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

I intend to ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, a lot of questions and while I do not wish to be insulting, I must leave the Chamber after asking them. I will listen back to the Minister's answers tomorrow.

There are some small but good measures in the Bill, as mentioned by the previous speaker, such as the extension of social welfare benefits to women who have premature births, maternal death protection and adoptive leave. The inclusion of self-employed persons in the invalidity pension is very important as is the announcement of the reinstatement of the Christmas bonus to long-term recipients of social protection. I do not wish to be a killjoy but I will bring cases to the Minister tomorrow in which the bonus payment is being refused. The definition of "long-term recipient" needs to be looked at because I have some very sad and poor mothers looking at me and asking what they are they going to do as they are not getting the bonus. I would like to speak with the Minister on this matter over the next few days.

Before I address my main concern, I wish to raise one other biting issue. In her original speech on the Bill, the Minister said she wanted to continue to build "a fairer and more inclusive society". Will the Minister clarify how this measures up when it comes to young people? A measure was introduced during the economic crisis, which was justified by that crisis by all the major parties in the House. It was another outrageous display of discrimination but was aimed at young people. The jobseeker's allowance is at a rate of €193 and although the rate granted to young job seekers has been partly reinstated, the rate is €147 for those under the age of 26. The insult, however, is for those under the age of 24 for whom the rate is €102 per week. Does the Minister know whether those who are under the ages of 26 and 24 pay cheaper bus fares, get cheaper groceries or pay less rent? How can we tell young people we value them if we treat them as being less valuable and continue to blatantly discriminate against them? There clearly is no need for that measure. We are out of the woods and in recovery and listen to boasts in this regard from the Government all the time. How do we justify this measure in the fundamental area of welfare to young people? The real purpose of this measure is as a message from the State to young people that they are disregarded. It tells them to emigrate, get out of the State or get a low-paid precarious job as that will do them. Insecure work is all they would be able to get. I believe we must seriously look at reinstating the rate. An injustice is being done to young people. If the Bill is about fairness and inclusion, then this measure is one of the worst aspects of it.

The most shocking aspect of the Bill is that it will become known, anecdotally and probably affectionately, as the bonkers Bill. It will be known as the bonkers Bill for an obvious reason. On the day following the budget, on national radio the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, was caught rapid by the husband of a woman who was being blatantly discriminated against regarding her pension. When asked about the discrimination the Minister said that he thought it was bonkers. The Bill will be known as the bonkers Bill because it has put a spotlight on an issue my group repeatedly raised during the last year and which has been raised by a plethora of Deputies in the House who will continue to raise it. I refer to the ongoing discrimination against pensioners in the way the contributory and the non-contributory social welfare pensions are calculated. I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy Doherty, about this privately. We had a set-to in the Dáil many times with the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, when he was Minister for Social Protection. When we raised the issue last year with the then Minister, Deputy Varadkar, we pointed out that it was a double discrimination against women who raised their families prior to 1994 because there was discrimination in the way the bands were calculated. It was highly punitive of those who were entitled to an old age pension.

There are a number of issues here. Governments are consistently extending the working life of workers and are simultaneously extending the time at which people can qualify for an old age pension. I do not know what it will be when I retire but I reckon it will be around the age of 68 or 69. I keep forgetting that I am not in a normal job but were I in a normal job with a contract until the age of 65, I would be one of those pensioners who would have to find the money or save it up to be able to live between the retirement age of 65 and the pension age of 68. The key point is that this discrimination has so far affected some 42,000 pensioners. When we argued the issue here last year with the then Minister, Deputy Varadkar, it was about 35,000. Each year, incrementally, more people join this queue of discrimination. Two thirds of these people are women and some are losing up to €35 per week. This is as a result of the changes to calculating the State contributory pension, which was brought in - as we all know - by a previous Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton.

Last year, Solidarity-People Before Profit and others, tabled amendments to the Bill, which we lost, to try to address that. One thing we did not lose, however, and on which we had to haggle with then Minister, Deputy Varadkar, was that he would produce a report on the matter. We wanted the report within three months but he said he would have it within six months. One year later, there is no sign of the report. It was supposed to look at implementing a newer and fairer method of calculating the pension.

We had thought this debate would be happening tomorrow but it does not matter that it is happening tonight rather than tomorrow. There will be a protest tomorrow outside the Dáil. It will be pensioners, mainly women, who want the Minister, Deputy Doherty, to listen to them and to act on this. I accept the Minister's bona fides on this issue and that she would love to do something about it. The Minister gave an interview to the Irish Examinerwhere she spoke of producing a memorandum to be brought to Cabinet by 14 November. That is the date I worked out through the interview. The Minister said this was an actuarial overview of what is possible. The Minister does not want to be sitting here next year with another 7,500 people being disadvantaged by the way this pension is calculated. The article goes on to discuss how much funding would be needed to cover this anomaly, that is, €70 million immediately and €290 million in total to resolve the issue. When the Minister and I spoke about this in conversation she did not believe she could bring it back to retrospective payments for those persons who had lost out but that she could ensure they would get some 98% of their pension reinstated. The acknowledgement that the Minister might be able to do this means that pensioners may feel if they can get 98%, why should they not get 100%.

Indeed, why should they not get retrospective payments? Some of those women will be here tomorrow. One of them, Ms Lillian McCarthy, has been mobilising her friends and going to meetings in different areas to make people understand what we are facing. The contributory pension involves a complex method of calculation and many people do not even realise what is happening until they turn 66 and try to sign up for it. It is not like the medical card which Fianna Fáil tried to remove almost a decade ago. When that happened, the grey brigade, as we are fondly called, were hit and responded in an amazing revolution saying, "In your face; we are not having this". In this case, however, people are being picked off almost like slices of salami year by year. They do not even realise it is happening. The good thing about the interview with the Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, was that when he said, "This is bonkers", it went viral. People began to listen and to understand what was happening to their pensions and their futures.

Lillian McCarthy is a strong example of what has happened. She started to work when she was 16 in 1965 and she retired at 66 in 2015. In the 1970s, she left the workforce to raise her family and she was out of work for approximately 15 years. In 1984, she returned to full-time paid employment until she retired 32 or 33 years later. She got up early every morning, as she wrote on her placard outside Leinster House when Deputy Varadkar was made Taoiseach. She had to get up at 5.30 a.m. to get from Rialto to Coolock to beat the traffic and keep her job.

As she started working so early in life and raised her family in the 1970s, Lillian is losing out through a calculation that brings her pension right back to the age of 16 and an averaging that brings down the bands. She is losing out even more because she raised her family for 15 to 20 years. That sort of penalty on women for raising the next generation of workers is unacceptable. There are other women I have met who not only raised the next generation of workers when they stayed out of the workforce, they are also minding the current generation. Not only that, they have looked after their parents' generation and kept them out of institutions and hospital beds by caring for them at home. They have done the State a huge service by saving so much money by looking after their children and then looking after the elderly, sick and disabled. They continue to do so, as do a certain number of men.

This is a really strong form of discrimination. I am baffled by it. We have anti-discrimination laws which I used to teach about when I was giving trade union courses. There are 11 grounds on which one cannot discriminate, including gender, age, religion, sexual orientation and so on. This method of calculating pensions ticks all of the boxes for discrimination by the State against its own citizens on the grounds of the first two, namely, gender and age. I do not know what it would take to get a case to Europe on this issue, but I am sure we would win it outright. The problem is that it would be slow, cumbersome and expensive.

As the years rattle on, the likes of Lillian are losing €33 a week. That is a lot of money over the course of a year. It represents a holiday or two, new windows for one's home, keeping a car on the road and all of the other things people have to do. There are many Lillians out there. I do not know how we can stand over this discrimination as a Dáil and a State and justify it on the basis that to get rid of it immediately would cost an extra €70 million and a further €200 million another year. In the name of God, people are watching us and they can clearly see that a State which has a problem collecting the Apple tax of €13 billion and which will pay money to lawyers across Europe to avoid having to take it, discriminates against people who have worked all their lives, got up early, reared children and looked after elderly and sick parents. It is outrageous, shocking and discriminatory.

When pensioners come to the Dáil at 6 p.m. tomorrow, I hope the Minister, Deputy Doherty, will meet them, talk to them and explain this. I hope all Deputies will make it their business to come out and reassure them that we are going to fight to change this outrageously discriminatory practice, get rid of the homemaker's scheme and narrow the bands to bring them back in line with a decent and dignified pension. If we keep going down this road, we will have a further cohort of old people on top of those we already have who must choose between turning on the heating or cooking a hot meal. That is a factual situation. Fuel poverty is rampant among the aged in this country. Age Action Ireland and the National Women's Council have done extensive reports on this which I am sure the Minister has seen. It is all evidenced, researched and proved. How we can sit here and deny it is beyond me. The fact that the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, said it was bonkers but continues to implement it because of the relatively small amount of money involved indicates that, in fact, he is also bonkers. We will start to think the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, is bonkers too unless she begins to fight clearly for this. I ask everybody listening to be outside the Dáil tomorrow at 6 p.m. because whether one is a pensioner or not, this is going to affect one as a worker when one comes to face retirement. People will be hit hard unless we force the State to change its mind. I hope to see lots of people there and I certainly hope to see the Minister.

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