Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach talks about not being honest. What about saying that increases in PRSI are a tax on jobs and that is why people should not vote for Sinn Féin? Those are the words that came out of his mouth. What has he done now? He has increased PRSI. We have always made it clear that these measures have to be funded. The right to retire on a pension has existed while the Taoiseach has been in government. It was a Fine Gael Government that abolished it in 2014. We are very clear. We know what the outcome of the last election was but let us be very clear. On behalf of Sinn Féin, I pledge that, if we get elected and form a government after the next election, we will give people the right to retire at the age of 65 if they choose to. Why? It is because we recognise that the brickie who is out in the rain today laying bricks and building the houses we need deserves that choice. We know that the hairdresser who has been on his or her feet since 9 o'clock this morning deserves that right, as does the person slogging it out on the factory floor. That is the difference. We have shown how it can be funded. The Government has already made a U-turn because of the pressure Sinn Féin put on it in the last election campaign and the fact that people demanded that it abandon its proposals and what it legislated for, which was to increase the pension age to 68. Why does the Taoiseach believe that that brickie today should not have the right to retire at the age of 65 when he did have the right to retire at that age ten years ago?

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