Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's approach. I would be glad to sit down with her and Deputy Ó Cuív to go through the particular lacuna in the legislation. This is a crunch time for this small cohort of people because they are approaching pension age. I hope we can make progress on the issue and ensure that these people are not denied their maximum pension contribution. As we know, they work very hard. In many cases, their incomes were below the living standard for many years, through no fault of their own. They worked very hard over the years and only availed of State assistance when absolutely necessary. Many were shocked to find when they reached pension age and filled out the forms that their insurance contribution records were broken.

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