Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation. I am glad we have in the Visitors Gallery the students from sixth class, I think, in St. Mary's National School in Knockcroghery. I was saying to their classmates from fifth class just a few minutes ago that I was coming into the House to talk about the pension contributions that will directly impact each and every one of the students here today. I know it is going to be a long time before they reach 66, but the decisions we are making in Dáil Éireann today will have a direct impact on whether these students are going to be able to get a pension when they reach 66 many years from now. We are trying to put in place a system to ensure there is enough money available to pay for the pensions of each and every one of these students when they have gone to college, worked and then, eventually and a long time from now, retired. It is, therefore, a critically important decision we are making here in this House in terms of the long-term viability of the State pension.

This is something we in the Oireachtas joint committee have been looking at for a considerable time. In fairness to the Minister and her officials, we could nearly give them frequent flyer points for coming in before our committee. We accept that we must ensure our pension system is sustainable and viable into the future. As the Minister knows, our committee made a recommendation to increase PRSI rates for employers and the self-employed. People will be critical of politicians not making decisions, but our committee made a clear decision in this regard. We believe it is possible to retain the pension age at 66, while altering the rates and the participation rates in our workforce. I will return to that issue shortly. It is, however, fundamentally important that we are all conscious of ensuring our pensions are sustainable well into the future.

As the Minister knows, the Parliamentary Budget Office produced its spring commentary earlier this week. While a number of issues were raised in the headlines concerning that analysis, what jumps out from this for me is that the report highlights that while the participation of women in the workforce went up during Covid-19, it has flatlined since then. As the Minister knows, the committee looked specifically at this issue and made strong recommendations. If we are going to have sustainable pensions in future, if the students from St. Mary's National School in Knockcroghery and every other primary school in this country are to have a viable pension, one that will meet their day-to-day needs when they reach pension age at 66, it is imperative that we encourage and facilitate as many women as possible to re-enter the workforce or to participate in it. Sadly, and disappointingly, while we saw there was a lot of flexibility during the Covid-19 pandemic that facilitated more women engaging with the workforce, this flexibility has not continued to be evident since. This is why we have seen a flatlining in the number of women in our workforce.

This is really disappointing considering we now have a net deficit in terms of employees. We are actively encouraging people from outside Ireland and the European Union to come here to fill job vacancies, yet we cannot seem to increase the participation rates of women in our workforce. One of the issues the committee has consistently raised in its recommendations is the gender anomalies in some of the proposals being brought forward. As the Minister knows, we made three recommendations on this legislation. One was to carry out a gender analysis of the impact of these proposals. This recommendation was made on foot of evidence we received from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. ICTU pointed out that it was concerned that the proposal in relation to top-up payments for dependent family members, combined with the proposed loss of up to €77 weekly for low-wage, part-time workers, would disproportionately impact people in low-paid employment and women. We need to encourage and facilitate women to participate in the workforce rather than create barriers to them doing so.

Sadly, this is not the first time I have come into the House and raised this gender anomaly with the Minister. As she knows, during the passage of the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024, I highlighted these specific issues. Again, the joint committee at that time put a very strong focus on the gender issues in that Bill. We made the point that it discriminated against women who were leaving the workforce for caring roles during maternity leave and other caring responsibilities and did not provide a correct balance for women. In her response, the Minister stated the matter could be looked at again. The reality, however, is that only once in a decade do we get an opportunity to bring in this type of reform in relation to pension legislation and PRSI contributions. Disappointingly, we are ignoring women again in another Bill. The recommendations on gender made with respect to the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill 2024 were not addressed in that legislation. The recommendations the committee made on gender in relation to this Bill have also been ignored. The assessment we asked for in the context of our pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill has not been provided for as part of this process. That is disappointing and is putting women at a significant disadvantage in the longer term in respect of their pension contributions and their overall pension rate.

If the Minister listened to the news reports this morning, she will know that another study has come out that says women will have to work eight years longer to obtain a pension equivalent to their male counterparts. This is because of anomalies we are building into the type of legislation being put forward here. While what I just mentioned was in relation to private pensions, we have done this for low-paid employment in the auto-enrolment Bill and we are doing it again here. The joint committee specifically asked for a gender assessment of the implications of this legislation, but that has not been forthcoming.

The reason the committee has been so strong on this issue is that when we looked at the pension age and made recommendations to the Minister in this regard, one of the significant reasons we came to the conclusions we did was the need to increase the participation rates of women and people with a disability in the workforce.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw the participation rate increase to 65%. This was a significant jump on the rate prior to that point, which had stood at about 62%.

Bringing flexibility into the workforce facilitated many women to participate in the workforce at that stage but it is also about addressing childcare issues that have not been adequately addressed, although they have been promised by Government after Government. Not facilitating women to contribute to the workforce where they wish to do so is impeding the long-term viability of the State pension.

It is the same for people with a disability. Yesterday, our committee held hearings with a number of disability groups who spoke about the inbuilt barriers within the social welfare system that is locking them out of the workforce at present. We must address these barriers and anomalies that are stopping people contributing to the economy, getting work in their own right where they want to do so and accessing training and education that would facilitate them in doing that.

I am disappointed that these issues are not being reflected in the consideration of the Bill that is before us today. It is a weakness in the Bill that we are not fully addressing low-paid employment, women in the workforce or people with a disability who want to work but who cannot do so because of the way disability payments and supports are structured at the moment. They effectively act as a barrier to them doing so. We have the opportunity now, as we are reforming the pension regime across the board in this country, to address these issues. We should not miss this opportunity. In the context of the case I made on the auto-enrolment Bill and the case I made here today, I ask the Minister to look again at these very specific and concerning issues in advance of Committee Stage of the Bill.

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