A CUT to the old-age pension in December’s budget cannot be ruled out, Minister for Social Protection Eamon Ó Cuív said yesterday.
The cuts, if carried through, would signal a change in Government policy. In last December’s budget, pensioners were one of the only groups to escape reductions in the social welfare budget.
In a series of media interviews, the Minister said he could not exclude one particular group from cuts on the grounds of their age.
“I am not ruling anything in or anything out in relation to social welfare changes, until I have all the information and [have] looked at all of the parameters,” he said.
“Pensions have to be taken into account in the mix. They are €5 billion of the €22 billion we pay out of the social welfare budget.
“I’m not saying they will be cut, but I cannot also rule out absolutely the possibility that they might be” he said on Newstalk.
Mr Ó Cuív’s comments followed an instruction earlier this week by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to his Cabinet colleagues that they must find departmental cuts of €3 billion within a month.
Fine Gael’s spokeswoman on social affairs Olywn Enright accused the Government of targeting the most vulnerable in society to make savings.
“It’s deeply depressing that just a few weeks into his new job as Minister, Eamon Ó Cuív is already talking about cutting pensions,” she said. She said the social welfare system was in urgent need of reform, but that cutting pensions was the wrong approach.
An organisation campaigning for older people was also highly critical of Mr Ó Cuív’s comments.
Older and Bolder said any cuts would have a detrimental impact on older people’s lives. Its director Patricia Conboy said research indicated that older people were financially stretched by the recession.
“The facts show that older people are concentrated in the lower income brackets and they are heavily reliant on State pensions and other income transfers like the fuel allowance and free travel,” she said.