Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This amendment addresses the same issue that I seek to amend in a number of my amendments as well. Senator Sherlock was highlighting the issue of the age threshold of 23 for starting payments and the income threshold of €20,000 in terms of the making of payments. This will see low-income workers and those who are without a university education, in effect, excluded from the scheme. If we look to the problem of the incentives such as tax reliefs that I have spoken about before, they have been skewed towards higher earners. Even though we now have a much wider pool, there is a danger that we will see the same division happening again within this scheme, where those who start work straight out of school may find themselves not in the scheme. We know that if people start out at work and are not in this scheme, it makes it less likely that they will join the scheme. One of the advantages of auto-enrolment is the idea that people are encouraged almost automatically to engage with their pension at this early stage and early age. I think the threshold is quite exclusionary.

Let us talk about the figure of €20,000. This is far more than 50% of the minimum wage. In fact, 50% of the minimum wage would be €13,208 per year. Half of the minimum wage is what many workers with care commitments who are working half time may be earning. We spoke earlier about this and it was one of my big concerns. In the context of our public contributory pension system, we failed those who care. We have a tax relief that does nothing for those who care but, rather, benefits wealthier earners. We have a problem here in that those who are working part time because of care commitments will potentially be excluded from the scheme. This is a mistake we make all the time. It is exactly those who most need to benefit from schemes who get excluded from them. Another example is when there was a requirement for making PRSI payments for spouses on family farms. This was a potentially great directive from Europe that would provide the capacity to have independent status within the social protection system and credits for those who are spouses on family farms or businesses. However, there was a threshold provided and people had to earn a certain amount of money before they could do it. Even though the whole point was that these were people who were contributing in a usually unwaged way and that their contribution would be recognised with a contribution, a contributory threshold was put up. I think self-employed people had to have €5,000 in cash that comes into hands, which meant that lots of spouses on family farms did not qualify. Similarly, we have a scheme that is supposedly meant to address the gender and employment gaps and yet a large number of part-time workers will not be able to access the scheme. These are exactly the persons who need to have the safeguard of a pension. Sadly, that €20,000 threshold will not only exclude those who are working part time. There are a lot of people working in the State who earn less than €20,000. There are people who are working 60% or 70% hours and who will still fall below the minimum wage under this measure.

I am concerned that the trickle-down approach we have taken with pensions is going to be replicated here. My amendments Nos. 37 and 38, which we will come to shortly, echo the point that Senator Sherlock was making, which is that we need to ensure that we properly gender and equality proof these measures. I keep saying this because I think it will be those on lower incomes and those who care who will be disadvantaged by these thresholds and measures, and a majority of those people will be women. More widely, there is an equality issue but the burden of the inequality created by a poorly designed policy will fall on women.