Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At the very core of this issue is choice. The Government had the choice to listen to the people in February when they made the retirement age an election issue. The Government chose to ignore them and chose to bulldoze ahead with a proposal to raise the pension age, right up to the eleventh hour. It chose to try to placate the public by kicking this issue down the road, a move that is swiftly becoming a recurring theme with this Government. The people who need and deserve choice are the workers, who have not only survived three recessions but worked damn hard to do so. These are the same people who sacrificed and lost the most when errors were made in this House, who rebuilt this country and were repeatedly critical to our social and economic recovery. Some of them are tired and they have earned the right to rest. However, the Minister and her partners in government are saying that they have not. They are saying that 47 years on a building site, 47 years of setting an alarm for ridiculous o'clock to work for ten hours a day in harsh conditions, is simply not enough. I mean no disrespect to the Minister personally, or to anybody in this House, but the only people who could have made this decision are ones who earn their money by sitting at a desk, because they certainly have never worked on a building site. As legislators, we need to be very careful of the rhetoric and terminology we use. Anybody listening here tonight would be forgiven for thinking that the Government, and the Department of Social Protection in particular, is burdened with looking after these workers. It is not. They have paid into their pensions and they are simply demanding they are given to them.

See this speech in context