Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This matter will be discussed further. It will need more examination. With regard to the two reports the Minister mentioned, one of my concerns about the Commission on Pensions, which, sadly, undermined the effectiveness of the proposals, is that its remit explicitly excluded examining the private pension tax relief. That was particularly unfortunate because one of the tasks of the Commission on Pensions was modelling how to pay for things. Some of its decisions include recommendations that I personally believe are very problematic and will have huge gender implications. For example, it suggested moving to a 40-year contributory requirement versus the expected 30 or 20 years. That was recommended almost solely on the basis of affordability and the cost, yet €2.9 billion of public expenditure on pension policy was not on the table to be discussed as to how that might be changed or shifted. That was not subject to that scrutiny. It was a kind of isolated discussion about half of pension policy, with decisions that have potential rights implications made on the basis of cost, while a huge area of Exchequer expenditure was not on the table and not discussed. That is my concern about that.

On the other issues and the knock-on effects, we have income inequality and a gender pay gap and of course that contributes to the gender pension gap. The question for us as a State is not what unfortunate things happen to be there but how to legislate, first to improve the working world, wage equality and those issues, and then when we are spending vast amounts of money, how to target it most effectively.As well as looking at the drivers relating to the fact that more women are on lower incomes and more men are on higher incomes, we also need to ask if we need a tax relief - that €2.9 billion is public money that everyone contributes to - that is mainly targeted at higher earners. That question stands regardless of what other important work we might need to do. Of the drivers of the inequality, the question is how we ameliorate and respond to it.

There is much work still to be done in this area. I thank the Minister. He indicated that he is interested in engaging in that work. We have that obligation in terms of equality budgeting. I hope this is an area, perhaps in the context of next year's Bill, that we will look at in more detail because policies such as this are the tests of equality budgeting.