Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to respond to some of the things in the Minister of State’s initial speech. First, what jumped out at me more than anything else was the expression “retired persons”. He referred at least ten times in his speech to “retired persons”. Once or twice, when he was not reading it, he said “retired workers”.

However, when the Minister of State said "retired persons", I was asking myself what they are retired from. There is a claim there is some ill-defined category of "retired workers". They have retired from work. They worked all their lives, so they are retired workers. Legal minds the Minister of State deals with may cause a row over that, but they are not retired persons, they are retired workers.

This is why they want their voices heard as they face, and have faced for the past ten years, major attacks on their standard of living through cuts, the Government bailing out the banks and all sorts of measures which have been taken against their schemes and their voices cannot be heard. The Minister of State maintains it is adequate for them to go to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman or the Pensions Authority but they have learned from hard experience that this is not sufficient. It does not do the trick. What they need is their voice at the table at the WRC. The Minister of State then stated that to give them a right to the WRC may have unintended consequences but they have that right for six months, albeit only for six months, after a change is made.

The Minister of State acknowledges the right for six months and then withdraws it. He is refusing to say that right should be more than just the six months' limit put on it. Retired public servants, civil aviation workers, ESB workers, CIÉ workers , An Post and Bord na Móna workers, retired RTÉ staff and semi-State staff, workers in this House, teachers, nurses, Eircom workers and the port and docks workers - you name it - are the people, as has been said repeatedly by Deputies in this House, who have built this country.

I thank all of the Opposition Deputies for their support and contribution. However, the Minister of State's speech has been littered with inaccuracies and evasions and is a complete slap in the face for retired workers, especially the amendment which states the Government will deal with this in 12 months, following consultation with the Ministers for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Social Protection and Public Expenditure and Reform, with unions, employers, IBEC and industrial relations bodies, but nowhere does the Minister of State intend to consult with the very people this Bill is about. The retired workers and their associations are deliberately excluded from the Minister of State's amendment and it is wholly insulting.

I will talk briefly about the gilt-edged pensions about which Deputies Gino Kenny and Barry and others Deputies spoke. The Minister of State and I can retire on a guaranteed pension that will be perceived by most of the population as being gilt-edged but former taoisigh and Ministers are on massive pensions. For what? What did they retire from? If workers did not retire from work and are not retired workers, just retired persons in the Minister of State's legal empire, what did these other renowned people retire from for them to deserve so much money from the public coffers on an annual basis?

There are technical arguments and unintended consequences, according to the Minister of State, but this Bill was produced after extensive consultation, which lasted two years, with experienced legal experts in the field of employment law from the OPLA. I thank them for all their hard work. Any issues the Minister of State, trade unions or IBEC have can be dealt with on Committee Stage and we are wide open to amendments to this Bill. However, the core principle of this proposal is the right of retired workers' organisations to be consulted prior to changes in their pension schemes and to be able to take a case to the WRC without the current restrictions.

Would it allow former workers to picket their workplace? No. We met the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, and explained this to them. It does not change the definition of a strike or allow former workers to put pickets on their workplace. Some may say that is a pity. Nevertheless, it does not do it and I want to reassure the Minister of State and anybody else that is the case. This Bill will not address the systemic attack on pensions but will give retired workers, not retired persons, a voice and the right to representation and for their associations to represent them. After a lifetime of work and building this society and the trade unions of which they were members, surely that is the least they deserve.

While retired workers rights have been attacked in recent years, younger workers also find themselves paying more into schemes and getting less in return. Here is an interesting statistic I got back in a parliamentary question. Between 2011 and 2018, retired public sector workers saw the State take more than €700 million directly from their pensions. In the same period, their working colleagues, who remained in their jobs and had not yet retired, paid an extra €2 billion in pension contributions for reduced benefits on retirement.

There is a scam here. There is a huge anomaly in terms of the right to representation and this flies in the face of European law to allow retired workers a voice. The attempt by the Government to kick this can down the road is not only insulting, it is unrealistic. People in their 70s and 80s have fought hard for the past ten years to get this Bill before the Dáil and now the Government is saying they cannot have it and it is kicking it down the road and will talk to everybody but not them or their associations. That has to be explained. If Members from the Green Party, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael vote to kick this down the road, they will feel the consequences. This will not be because I say so but because these retired workers tell me so.

It has been a pride and privilege to work with those people, their associations and with the senior citizens' parliament and Age Action Ireland, which is also backing this proposal. That is a huge cohort of citizens in this country who do use their votes, unlike younger people who tend to be in the lesser-voting category. The Government should be mindful of that. That is not to threaten the Government but to try to put leverage on it to say please give retired workers the chance to have this Bill go to Committee Stage, where it can be scrutinised and amended.

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