Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Let us leave names out of it and mention a figure instead. The figure I will mention is the €10 million paid out in political pensions in 2018 alone. It is one rule for Ministers and Deputies and another rule for the pensioners in question. The retired workers in question are the people who have played a key role in and contributed more to the building of this country. I challenge Members to name one group who has contributed more to the building of this country than have retired workers. There is none. There are positives and negatives in this country. On the positive side of the balance book, in terms of what has been contributed, built up and passed on to the next generation, there is no group that has contributed more than the retired workers.

However, they were a convenient punchbag for conservative Governments led by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and participated in by the Green Party and the Labour Party, in the austerity years. They were made the whipping boys and girls of austerity by the taking of the knife to the defined benefit schemes, three quarters of which have now gone. It was done by promoting the cheapskate defined contribution schemes, by ending the index link between pensions and the rise of wages within society and by putting forward the phoney argument that this is necessary because of demographic changes. Capitalism is a system that is in crisis and decline. A system developing and expanding in a healthy way would be able to accommodate the demographic changes without enormous bother while providing for decent pensions and decent increases for people who have contributed so much to society. Instead, these pensioners have had their pensions frozen, as per the examples referred to earlier, or in many other cases actually cut.

I want to echo the point that it is a shame and scandal that the leadership of the trade union movement has allowed that to happen without opposing or resisting it or without making a fight on the issue. That could and should have been done. It is a disgrace it has not been done to date. Instead, the Government is trying to infantilise the pensioners in question. These people are responsible members of society who have raised families. Many of them are grandparents but yet, one would not treat a child this way. They have no say on their pension scheme whatsoever. The decisions will be made over their heads. There is no seat for a pensioner whatsoever at the table. The decisions will be made for them. This is an attempt to infantilise a generation of people who built this country up. It is a disgrace.

They are a large group of people, however. There are nearly 500,000 workers in occupational pension schemes. They will be ignored at the Government's peril. They are ex-workers but not ex-voters. They have shown in the past what they can do when they use their muscle. They showed what they could do when they took to the streets when there was an attempt to take the medical cards from the over-70s. They showed what they could do in the last general election.

Like a bolt from the blue, an issue that had been beneath the radar emerged above the surface and put the establishment parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael under huge pressure. This was the cuts to the State pension and the attempt to raise its qualifying age from 65 to 66, 67 or 68, which they agreed among themselves. It was a bolt from the blue that strongly hit those parties in the general election. The grey panthers had a real impact on that general election and will have a real impact on the next election, as well as before it in terms of the pressure that can and will be exerted if the Government continue to play them for fools.

The Government is in the last chance saloon on this issue. I ask the Minister of State to withdraw the amendment and allow the Bill to pass Second Stage tonight. If there are issues with it, and I have no doubt there are, they can be teased out on Committee Stage.

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