Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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37. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will consider in budget 2018 extending the homemaker's scheme to ensure women who took time off work to raise their families will not be at a loss; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39629/17]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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When will we receive the report on how we will deal with discrimination against homemakers who brought up their kids in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and who, because the homemaker's credit does not extend back to those years, are being discriminated against in their pension entitlements? I refer also to the issue of the averaging of pensions after former Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton's changes to the bands in 2012. We were promised a report by the former Minister and now Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar. Where is that report? When will the changes happen?

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I do not like to admit that I am ignorant, but I do not have a clue what report the Deputy is talking about and I am not aware of any being drafted. Therefore, I will be honest with the Deputy and tell him the current position. No more than in the Deputy's own office, this issue comes across my desk in my office in County Meath quite regularly. It has been raised by women in the past two years and will obviously accelerate in the coming years. The women in question, on reaching pension age, are being told when they seek their pension that they are not entitled to what they expected to receive and they are seriously aggrieved about it. When we consider the overall sum of €20 billion that comes out of the Department every year, we note that €7.5 billion goes towards pensions. It is a sizeable amount. An extra €200 million was added to the pot this year just because of the number of people who turned 66 years this year. The rate of payment, as the Deputy and all of us know, is based on a yearly average, a condition that was introduced in 2012.

I will not read what is contained in my written response because the Deputy already knows what it states. To do what the Deputy and I would wish to do would cost hundreds of millions of euro. Given that we were having a spat earlier about who would get an extra fiver or €2 per week, we are all aware that the money is not available to fix the anomaly in question. All I can do – I propose to do it later this year – is proceed to public consultation on moving the entire system to a total contribution system. I am told that we will be able to have the public consultation process in a number of months. A maximum period of 12 weeks should be sufficient to engage in public consultation with the industry, unions and affected individuals. More importantly, it is question of starting the development of an IT system that will allow me to move everybody's pension payment to a total contributions pension payment. The discussions we will have will involve some winners and some losers. That will be politically difficult because nobody ever wants to see anybody losing. We need to have a conversation collectively about how we will pay pensions, on what they will be based and how they will be calculated. As we all know, the pot of money from which they come is in surplus, but it will not be for the next number of years. It is a question of from where the funding will come. Much and all as I would love to tell the Deputy that I am going to fix the problem, we just do not have the money to do so now. I have to fix the whole pot as opposed to fixing the problem in question.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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On the question of where the additional money can be obtained, I accept that additional money is needed, but I will tell the Minister where it can be found. The employers' PRSI contribution in this country is so far below the norm elsewhere in Europe that it is shocking. In fact, the big gap in tax revenue by comparison with most of our European counterparts is precisely the shortfall in employers' PRSI contributions. It is precisely the source from which one would want revenue to pay for pensions and to end what the Minister has accepted is completely unacceptable discrimination, mostly against female pensioners. The position on the commitment made by the former Minister for Social Protection and now Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, who he said he understood the issues involved, promised that we would move towards lifetime contributions and said that he would deal with the inequities resulting from the averaging system and that there would be a report within six months, is slightly alarming. Now we hear that there is no report, that something will happen and that there will be a public consultation process but that the Government does not really have the money. That is really not good enough.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Let me be very clear. First, there is a difference between employers' PRSI contributions in Ireland and those made in other continental European countries. The difference is that what those countries give for the insurance payments is vastly different from what we give in benefits in this country. I am absolutely sure that if in this country there were to be an increase in PRSI payments, or if employers were asked to increase PRSI contributions, one would want to get a hell of a lot back, as opposed to paying for something for which they are already paying.

As I said, I do not know what report the former Minister was talking about.

A large amount of work has been done in the Department around the anomalies in the scheme. A new scheme which will involve total contributions over the average life span of everybody's working life is the model towards which we are moving. I cannot do that unilaterally and certainly cannot do it unilaterally politically. More importantly, the millions of people in this country whose lives will be affected need to be consulted and told what our plans are, and we need to get their input as to how we get there. That is what is going to happen over the next couple of weeks.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I repeat that in parliamentary questions last year and again this year we confirmed that if we created a new band for employers' PRSI for people who are employed on incomes over €100,000, it would result in hundreds of millions in additional revenue. That would be fair and would help to generate money.

Another big area is tax relief for wealthy pensioners. Hundreds of millions of euro are spent on pension reliefs for very wealthy people. I do not mind such measures for ordinary people who are putting away a few quid for their pensions, but very wealthy pensioners - multimillionaires and so on – are putting money away and receiving significant tax reliefs for gold-plated pensions. The Minister could collect some extra money by closing off some of the reliefs for the wealthiest in Irish society. That would give us the sort of money we need to end discrimination and have a fair pension system for all pensioners.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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First of all, I refer to the first comment the Deputy made. When people pay into a social insurance fund they expect to get something back. The Deputy is in the business of expecting everybody over a certain threshold to give absolutely everything away so that they can pay for everything else, which is not fair. One puts something in and get something out. That is what a social insurance fund is for.

My job and that of whichever Government happens to be in office is to be responsible for ensuring that the system is fair and money is available to make sure that people have enough money to live on in their older years. That is in new system towards which we are going to move and what the public consultation we will launch later this year will involve. We are moving to a total contributions model which will solve the anomalies which I acknowledge currently exist.