Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all of those measures. It is a tremendous budget for social welfare recipients and many others. All those improvements were admirable and necessary. However, there is a constitutional principle in this regard. People are paying into a system in anticipation of receiving a pension from it at a later stage but they do not qualify when the time comes. There is a constitutional commitment that does not arise as far as they are concerned. As the Minister of State said, it is usual that they would qualify for a non-contributory pension but there are many who do not. The few are the ones we should deal with now. It will not cost a lot. In any event, these people paid contributions but they were insufficient in number to qualify for the pension.

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