Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The pension age was a key issue in the general election in February 2020. Voters across the State expressed their opposition to the pension age increase throughout the election campaign. The Government told them that things like that would not happen. While in power from 2007 to 2011, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party decided to increase the pension age to 67 by 2021 and to 68 by 2028. Fine Gael and the Labour Party implemented that while in government in 2011. In 2020, those same parties went out and said they were not in favour of the increases in the pension age that were the doing of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party in 2007 and Fine Gael and the Labour Party in 2011. I spoke again last week about double standards. It is a great thing that there is social media now because people can actually go back and check the record with regard to what various governments, some members of which may now be in opposition, have done, and hold them to account. How dare they ask persons of aged 65 who have worked their whole lives for this country and paid their taxes to queue up to get the jobseeker's allowance?

How does the Government dare to do this? What it is doing is hypocritical. I hope every person of pension age, and every child and grandchild of those pension-age people, researches and sees exactly what Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and the Labour Party have done to those people in their retirement years.

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