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

With respect to Deputy Penrose, I was a lowly backbencher in 2011 when Labour Party Ministers were sitting at the Cabinet table that made this decision. Nothing has changed since, other than that there are more people working. We have thankfully a jobs led recovery and the Social Insurance Fund is now in a small surplus. When the Labour Party entered government in 2011, the fund was in a small surplus that rapidly went into a deficit in a matter of years. I cannot ignore that, no more than Deputy Penrose could in 2011, the former Minister, Mary Hanafin, could in 2010 or her predecessor, Martin Cullen, could before that. We have an ageing demographic and the number of workers versus the number of pensioners is flipping. While it would be lovely, populist, warm and fuzzy to tell people at home that we will bring the retirement age back to 65, the simple fact is that for every year it is delayed, I or whoever is lucky enough to be in this position after me, has to find €250 million just to stand still. That is €250 million in every year that we delay.

We are looking at calculating pensions in a fairer way to address anomalies in the system that allow people get more out of the Social Insurance Fund, SIF, than others who may have put more into the fund. When I bring the memo for total contributions in a few weeks, we will be able to see the new approach. Regardless of how much we want to be warm and fuzzy to people who will be retiring in the coming years, nobody can escape the fact that we will have many more people drawing a pension and fewer workers supporting those pension payments.

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