Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister will know well that there is not a country in the world that moves retiring workers onto a jobseeker's payment and which treats them as someone who is unemployed. Since 2014, more than 35,000 65-year-olds have been forced onto a jobseeker's payment at retirement. Not only did Fine Gael and the Labour Party abolish the State pension transition payment provided to 65-year-olds at retirement, but they also announced increases to the pension age. These increases go further and faster than equivalent increases in any other country of the EU, despite Ireland having the youngest population in Europe. Let us not pretend that these pension age increases were about ensuring the State pension remained sustainable or ensuring that we were protected against demographic changes. They were part of a deal done with the troika to save a few pounds. This deal told workers approaching retirement age that they could not continue at work because their contracts did not allow them to while access to the State pension into which they had paid for decades was cut. It was taken away and they were told that they should instead join the dole queue and seek new employment at 65 years of age.

A number of commitments on pensions were made in the programme for Government. I have read them many times. They might make it look as though the Government is actually doing something, but it is not. An example of this is its commitment to replace the jobseeker's payment for 65-year-olds with what it refers to as an early retirement allowance. This makes it sound almost as if the Government is doing people a favour when, in fact, it is nothing more than a name change. This allowance will be paid at the same rate as jobseeker's allowance.

This same commitment refers to the removal of the requirement for people to partake in job activation measures, a requirement that simply does not exist. Once a person turns 62, they are no longer required to partake in job activation schemes. In recent months, Fianna Fáil Deputies have been submitting questions asking where the State pension transition payment is. It is not coming. Despite being a commitment in Fianna Fáil's election manifesto just a few months ago, it has fallen by the wayside to be replaced by the promise of a name change.

In preparing for this debate earlier I was reminded of my parent's generation, including those who are seven or eight years off pension age. My father began working at 15 years of age for a local butcher. His parents thought he was in school until his father spotted him at the butcher counter one day. When he reaches 65 years of age he will have worked for 50 years. There are thousands more like him. Yet, in not one part of the Minister's long-winded amendment to the motion does she acknowledge that contribution of a lifetime of work. Some of those affected went out to work when they were only teenagers. They paid their taxes with the promise of a pension at 65 years only to have the rug pulled from under them. People from that generation do not now have the security or certainty they had once of a pension at 65 years, or of knowing that they would get the pension at 65. In fact, after a lifetime of work that certainty no longer exists. The pension age might be 66, 67 or 68 years.

Restoring the State pension transition at 65 years is the right thing to do. Failing to support the motion is to say to 65 year olds that their place is on jobseeker's support after retirement. My party and I believe that 65 year olds who have made such a contribution to our society and communities deserve far better when they hit retirement at 65 years of age.

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