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

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as ucht teacht anseo agus gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. Fuair mé glaoch gutháin uaithi ag rá nach mbeadh sí ar fáil tráthnóna agus thoiligh mé dul ar aghaidh leis seo. Tá áthas orm an deis a fháil an cheist thábhachtach seo a thógáil leis an Aire Stáit. As the Minister of State knows, the Government made a good decision recently to make a payment of €200 to each person in receipt of a long-term primary payment. However a mistake has been made. I will focus on pensioners but it applies to all who receive it. In cases where an adult dependent is on the payment only €200 was paid and not €400. We should outline why this is unfair. Two people have two costs. As the Minister of State is very well aware from his constituency work, if people going on the pension come to him he will assess what is the best option for them. For many women, and more so than for men, because they tend to have traditionally taken more time out for caring, they have gap year contribution records. Man or woman, there are four ways to assess the best option for a recipient of a pension. For couples the best option is that both get a full contributory pension. This is by far the best option. However, if a full contribution pension is not possible, four other options come into play. For the person without the good record the first option is the non-contributory pension. Within the contributory pension are the second and third options. These are the total contributions system and the average system. The fourth option is that of the dependent adult, which is means tested. We would always advise people to take whatever option is better but nobody ever foresaw that there would be discrimination between the choices. In the event of people choosing the dependent adult option, even though they had an underlying right to a pension in their own right, they are discriminated against. I believe this is an oversight.

I would like to point out that the costs are not that great. A total of 2,983 qualify adult dependents are paid on the non-contributory pension. There are 54,510 on the contributory pension. If we multiply this by €200 we get approximately €11 million, which in the greater scheme of what this costs, is very small. A total of 10%, give or take, of contributory pensioners have a qualified adult as do 3% of non-contributory pensioners. I am sure this was a mistake and an oversight. There is no significant cost factor involved. I am sure it would not be a big job to amend the statutory instrument to cover somebody having chosen in good faith the dependent adult option to get €400 like everybody else in a situation where two adults are dependent on a payment from social welfare.

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