Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell on this report. I attended its launch on what was an auspicious day. I welcome the Minister, I congratulate her on her appointment and I wish her well in the discharge of her functions.

I have become increasingly aware of a delay in the holding of inquests. People may die after a fall at home but it is now quite frequent, in the Dublin area at any rate, for an inquest to take a year or 18 months. It is difficult and unnecessary to leave that hanging over a family, especially when there is no suggestion of foul play. In the Constitution there is a general right to inherit or bequeath property by will but the legal profession and the Judiciary have somehow created a new idea that any challenge to a will gets paid for out of the estate, unless it is brought recklessly or in bad faith. This means people who are trying to administer estates in accordance with the intentions of the deceased are effectively blackmailed into surrendering to any case unless they can establish that the will is being challenged in bad faith or there is no real hope or prospect of challenging it successfully. Legal costs are very significant in these cases.

As regards getting older and approaching death, people are living a lot longer and, from time to time, it is tentatively stated that the pensionable age will go up by a year in 15, 12 or two years' time but we have not grasped the nettle of compulsory pensionability and bringing people's working lives to an end well in advance of the end of their natural lives. This applies particularly in the public sector, where so many people face getting their marching orders at 65 and living in an economic twilight zone thereafter until the onset of extreme old age. In the context of implementing all the suggestions made in Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell's report, we have to face up to the fact that when Bismarck introduced the old age pension in Germany, it was available, on average, for about two years. However, we now live in a world where pensionability will be 15 or 25 years for may people. The implications, economically and socially, for those who are marginalised, out of employment or not playing an active part in the community are very significant and we have to face up to them.