Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When it comes to the pension age and the retirement age, the Deputy and I were both born in the 1970s. At that time, the pension age in Ireland was 70 and the average life expectancy for a man was 68. All the calculations, going back through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, were based on the idea that people would pay into the Social Insurance Fund for 30 or 40 years and only be retired for a few. That has fundamentally changed. People now live longer and are retired for 20 or 30 years. That is great but it has to be paid for.

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