Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

One cannot have a contributory pension system unless the people who expect to be beneficiaries of the system contribute sufficiently to it. Way back in 1997 all of the parties then in the Dáil agreed to increase the number of pension contributions required on a staggered basis over a long period. The Oireachtas agreed to one of the changes in the early 2000s. The second set of changes has come into effect now. The Senator must remember that it is a social insurance scheme, just like that under which people insure their property, and unless there is a sufficient payment to the insurance fund there will not be enough to pay the legitimate claimants when there are many claims on the policy.

As the country's demographics change and there are more old people living longer it makes fundamental good sense that, since 1997, the Oireachtas has provided that if there is a large increase in the numbers likely to claim a contributory pension, there would be greater contributions. The good thing about the Irish system, and this is a tribute to successive Governments, is not only do we have a contributory system but we also have a strong non-contributory system which provides that anybody who has made insufficient contributions or, in some cases, for various reasons, has not contributed to the system, is in a position, on a means-tested basis, to claim a very significant non-contributory old age pension. I put it to Senator Cullinane that if he were to compare the pension provision for older people in the Republic with that in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland he would find that under successive Governments, the Irish State and taxpayer have been as strong and as generous as possible in the context of the State's means. Almost everybody in the North would acknowledge this. The Senator's suggestion that in a social insurance pension system we would abandon notions of proper funding is not the way to provide for the economic-----