David Norris (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House. I had not anticipated speaking on this debate but by a curious piece of serendipity this morning I received a letter from an ordinary citizen, not a constituent, and I would like to put it on the record and ask the Minister to examine the queries in it.

Before I do that, I feel myself very lucky in my pension arrangements because I have a pension from Trinity College. I anticipate receiving a pension from the Oireachtas and because I have passed the magical 20 years, I have the maximum. I even managed to extract from the Department information on the stamps I paid before Trinity sold the pass and moved to a different pension scheme and I am entitled to the glorious sum of €114 per month as a result of my stamps. I am very lucky and am grateful for it. However a large number of people in this country have no pensions at all. We need to worry about that. There should be universal, mandatory, properly funded pensions. There is a difficulty because of the age profile but we must examine that.

It would be a good exercise in public information if the Minister could put on the record the social welfare entitlements and take-up of our immigrant and asylum-seeking community. I say this because I think they are modest, but there is a terrible myth that Irish people are being disenfranchised. They are getting more than we are, so to speak, and are receiving all these social welfare perks. It would be a healthy exercise if the facts were made public. I recently dealt with some people from Mosney and the social welfare benefit they get is pretty small. No one is going to have a junket on that. It would be good for Irish people to know the facts. I am not antagonistic to immigrants or asylum seekers. Their state is not luxurious in the manner people think. If there are social welfare fraudsters, they should be intensively investigated because to take money from the income of the poor is one of the meanest frauds.

The letter I received is from a gentleman in County Wicklow. He writes:

Dear Mr. Norris,

I am an ordinary person working for the local authority for the past ten years. We have by law to contribute to the spouses and orphans scheme. A few years back, one of my workmates' wives [I do not think he meant his workmate had a collection of wives; it was not a harem. He means the wife of one of his workmates.] died suddenly and left him to rear three children. It appears that he has to die, not the wife, in order to benefit from the scheme.

That is a real situation that must be examined. If there is an insurance and social welfare benefit, and if we respect the family, which we are everlastingly being told we do in this House and the Constitution, surely when one partner dies and there has been a scheme we should make provision to include some cushioning for the bereaved partner. It was much worse years ago because when my father died, my mother received nothing. If she had died, he would have received a housekeeper allowance. It was crazy. Women were not valued at all.

The man's letter continues:

Also, single people are forced to pay into this scheme. Sir, why? [with a big question mark] Why should single people be forced to pay for someone else's widows and orphans?

I have no problem paying for other people's widows and orphans schemes but one needs to get something back and be able to participate in at least some of the social welfare benefits. If single people do, there is an information task there to let people know.

He goes on to state:

The scheme does not apply to same-sex couples or cohabiting couples. I downloaded the Act and studied it carefully, Sir. It discriminates against all. Unless you are married the State does not recognise partnerships and the children of partnerships cannot benefit from this scheme. Predominantly this scheme was set up to help these very same people.

He said he brought it to his union's attention but received no information from it. We will have to look at this area, although I do not know how accurate it is. Same-sex couples certainly derive no benefit in many cases, something which will have to be examined.

I am sorry to say that the Government — I know it was not the Minister — acted in the most miserable fashion when a case was taken by a same-sex couple against a transport company to derive for the employee's partner those benefits which were given to both married and cohabiting heterosexual couples. The Equality Tribunal found in their favour, but when the case went to the Government, instead of operating to address the injustice and the discrimination, it redefined "spouse" to swindle them out of it.

We had a debate on this issue last week and some speakers said that if we recognised these relationships, there would be tax implications. Of course there would be tax implications, but at the moment people like me find that the State's hand is often in our pocket. We pay taxes and it is not fair to say that we should continue to pay taxes and get nothing back.

I was interested in the case of a man, who does not appear to be gay and certainly does not say it, whose married workmate seems to have suffered discrimination. He puts it into a context which we will have to examine. At the moment, the State is benefiting unjustly from gay people who are statistically higher per capita earners. I do not think that is fair, although I have no problem in paying for the widows and orphans of my colleagues and my fellow citizens. That is what life is about. I believe in the good old communist maxim, "From each according to his ability to each according to his needs." That is the way society should be run. I do not mind paying for ten extra people to have their teeth done or their spectacles adjusted and so on, but I want to be the 11th. I do not want to be kept out of the scheme because that makes me feel unequal, even with my three pensions.