Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My understanding is that the smoothed earnings benchmark was provided as an input, but other determinant factors were taken into account. We all accept those extra payments are obviously welcome. However, the Pensions Commission and the technical subcommittee sat and made a determination on the 34% of average gross earnings. There was a reason for that. We have had conversations here about how farcical it gets, not only on pensions but all social protection payments, in particular at budget time. We almost get into a game of one-upmanship about who proposed a fiver more, €12, €20, €25 or sometimes unfortunately a lot less. We have called for a social welfare adequacy commission or something where we could just get down to indexing and take the politics and the sting out of it. We could take it out of this Chamber and provide people with what they need.

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