Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In fairness to all parties here there was an agreement then. A cornerstone of our social welfare system is a very important and significant contributory old age pension which can be funded only if the people who wish to benefit from it contribute enough to meet the promises that the Government has made. There are an increasing number of people who survive not only to claim their pensions but to live for a very long time. That is a great demographic bonus for this country as is the number of children in the country. It does cost significantly more to fund pensions for the increasing number of people claiming contributory and non-contributory old age pensions. This year and next year the social welfare Estimate will provide for an additional ¤200 million to ¤300 million in funds to cover the increase in the older population and the fact that those people are living longer.

The second part of our system, which is probably one of its best parts, is the non-contributory pension. If for some reason a person has made limited contributions or none to a contributory pension and has limited or insufficient means, that person can claim a non-contributory pension whose rate is pretty close to that of the contributory pension. I can assure the Senator that his suggestion, which implied that many people, particularly women, will suddenly be left without an old age pension is wrong. There will of course be people whose contributions have been insufficient so they will receive a partial pension assessed in terms of contributions, as they would always have done. Going back to the time of Lloyd George one cannot have a contributory pension-----