Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I had not intended to contribute but I observed from my office that the numbers were a little scarcer than I thought and I would like to make a few comments.

The Minister deserves to be complimented because he has kicked out a ball and forced people to debate issues such as compulsion that they were circumnavigating. I am not sure we will be as laudatory when he proposes his solutions. It is extremely important to separate the issue from the propaganda of the pensions industry.

I do not need to remind a member of the present Government about the folly of ignoring a problem in the hope that it will disappear. The Government faces a bill of between €.5 and €1 billion for nursing home charges because various people ignored it in the hope that it would go away.

We have time to deal with this problem and avoid a number of undesirable consequences. We must be careful not to create a culture in which older and retired people are perceived as a burden. This issue requires management but it is not unmanageable and will neither overwhelm us nor disappear. There is a feint underlying suggestion in much of what has been said that for people on a low-wage income retirement means movement from moderate poverty to worse poverty and that is not acceptable. We must, and can, work out a system to ensure adequate provision for everybody.

This country claims to be able to provide a new model of partnership for the rest of the world using a method of doing business whereby the Government has a role, individuals have a role and, unequivocally, employers also have a role. I was astonished to hear one of my colleagues suggest that employers could not be required to have a role in ensuring their employees had security of income in the longer term. I am open to suggestions on how that should be done. Employers in this country have one of the lowest levels of employer's PRSI in the EU. There is no PRSI in Denmark and I am unsure about the levels in the accession countries. However, the level of taxation in Denmark would horrify any Irish employer. We also have low levels of corporation tax, and there are other issues involved in this matter that are not within the hands of Government.

I am tired of the rhetoric about the burden of regulation, and that once people get something it becomes the norm and they want more. In language that I dislike, every international evaluation describes Ireland as one of the "freest" economies in the world. According to various indices where the United States is rated first, we are second or third along with Singapore. If there is a burden on employers in this country, it is one of the lowest in the developed world. If we are to sustain a partnership economy, everybody has an obligation to take responsibility for these issues.