Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If I had not put interim measures in place, members of the public service who wanted to avail of this option would not have been in a position to do so under any circumstance. We have the interim measures in place because I felt it was necessary to have some lead-in time between announcing that we were going to do this and bringing forward a Bill to give people time to arrange their affairs and make decisions on whether they wanted to continue to work. I introduced the interim measures cognisant of the fact that people might quickly decide that they wanted to work further and I wanted to allow them to do so.

The provisions for people commencing work on the minimum point on the salary scale ensure we will stand by and implement the principle of abatement. Otherwise, we would find ourselves in a situation where people might continue to work but the aggregate figure of what they would get in maintaining their salary plus their pension would deliver a sum that was very high. This all comes from my desire to allow people to avail of this option before the legislation is passed.

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