Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As somebody who was party to the writing of this report and who, along with my colleagues, put a lot of effort into it, I have to say the attitude of the establishment here in trying to rubbish us is absolutely horrendous. The Commission on Pensions did an honest job within its terms of reference, but the terms of reference were written in an attempt to get a particular result. I hope to outline why I disagree with the result. At the very end of my few minutes, I will come to why I believe the terms of reference were too narrow.

The first point I wish to raise is that I know many people, including teachers who are burnt out, care workers who have developed health issues from heavy work, people in the building trade and many other workers, who do not believe they will be in a fit physical or mental state to continue working beyond the age of 66 and who wish to retire. I have no problem with allowing those who wish to continue working - and I am one of them - to do so, but to say to people at the age of 66 that, although we know they cannot work and that they spent 40 years working, they cannot retire is incorrect.

When you read the report in detail, you will see that there are two choices. I am going to compare them. One choice, package 4, calls for 10% Exchequer funding either way. That is even-stevens. There is no difference there. Another choice, package 3, says there should be no increase in the pension age while package 4 says it should be increased to 68 incrementally over time. Where do the differences in how the money is raised arise? To make up for giving people the pension at 66, package 3 specifies that, between now and 2030, the self-employed contribution is to be increased from 4% to 10%, but package 4 specifies the exact same thing, so there is no difference there. Package 3 then specifies that, between 2030 and 2040, the self-employed contribution is to be increased by 2.8%, while package 4 specifies an increase of 2.4%, a difference of 0.4%. Package 3 specifies a further increase of 0.9% on top of that by 2050, while package 4 specifies 0.1%. Even at that rate, which would be 13.7%, the self-employed contribution would still be much better value, on an actuarial basis, than the employers' and employees' contributions put together. I have no difficulty in saying that the people on package 3 would be much better off getting the pension at 67 in light of the quite small differences I have outlined.

The other significant difference lies in the increase in employers' and employees' contributions. Package 3 specifies that this should increase by 0.2% by 2030 while package 4, the one which sets the pension age at 68, specifies no increase.

Then by 2040 it is 1.55% in package 3 and 1.35% in package 4. It then goes up by 0.9% versus 0.1% again in the last ten years up to 2050. We have two choices: to increase the PRSI contributions and give the pension at age 67 or find alternative sums. This is where I really run into trouble.

There has been no mention of auto-enrolment here. I keep tabling parliamentary questions and for some reason the Department of Social Protection does not want to give us the data. Basically auto-enrolment is coming in the next year or two, according to the Government. With auto-enrolment, the employer, the employee and the State will put money in to give the employee a pension maybe 40 years hence. The State appears to be saying that we can find all this money to put money in for 20, 30 or 40 years hence, whenever the person reaches the pension age, and that we have so much money that we can put it in now but we cannot pay the person the State pension at 66.

As someone who wants to give everybody the basic pension before starting to top up their pension, to me the bottom line is to give everybody the basic pension at 66 and then top up with whatever is left. What the Government is trying to do by subterfuge by avoiding auto-enrolment is to do it backwards. It says we are going to start to put the money in and commit to auto-enrolment first, and we are determined to increase the pension age because it suits the Government. It suits the system because it suits the private pension industry.

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