Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Senators who have expressed concern about the protest yesterday and compliment the members of the Garda on the manner in which they dealt with it. In fairness to them, they put up with a lot of abuse and threats and managed very well in a difficult situation. I do not think any garda should have to put up with the abuse endured yesterday.

On the matter of social welfare reform, we have the highest number of people in households with no income other than social welfare across Europe. There has to be reform for a very fundamental reason. Whether we like it or not, we will have 20,000 more people reaching pension age every year from now on. That means 20,000 extra people per annum will be in receipt of the pension and will require additional care such as health care. We need to plan for that, and part of that planning is reform.

Whoever comes into Government in 2016 - I hope it will be Fine Gael and the Labour Party - by the time they leave Government five years later, there will be 100,000 more people in receipt of the old age pension. We currently have 3.5 people working for every old age pensioner, and if we want the same ratio in 15 years we will need 2.7 million people working. We need to bring about reform. The Tánaiste has brought about necessary reform of-----