Making 65-year-olds go on benefit a joke, says Sinn Féin

Changes made to the State pension by the last government have disproportionately affected women, Sinn Féin has claimed.

The party’s social protection spokesman John Brady called on the Government to restore pension rates and bands to their 2012 rate and reduce requirement for State pension eligibility from 520 to 26O contributions.

Mr Brady was speaking as he opened a Private Members’ time during which he also called on the Government to reinstate the transitional State pension to allow workers the option of retiring at 65 with pension support.

He said this week more than 5,000 men and women aged 65 would receive their weekly jobseeker’s payment of €188. He said it was an “absolute joke and farce” that when people reached 65, they were not allowed to apply for their pension but had to go on jobseeker’s benefit.

‘Appalling injustice’

The Wicklow TD also called for equality for women retiring. Referring to the marriage bar, where women had to give up their job once married, he said it was not abolished until 1973 but “this appalling injustice impacted on an estimated 47,000 women which has yet to be addressed”.

However, Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar said Sinn Féin’s proposed changes would cost €150 million and costs to the Social Insurance Fund would rise again in 2018 and every year after that.

“Sinn Féin has put forward no proposals in its motion to fund any of its plans,” Mr Varadkar said.

He said the Government had worked hard to bring the fund from deficit to surplus and this year, for the first time since 2008, the fund would have a surplus.

He also said public servants recruited before 1995 “paid and still pay a lower PRSI rate of 0.9 per cent and so they are not entitled to the State pension anyway. They are not entitled to it whether they are men, women or whether married or not. Sinn Féin is clearly confusing the State pension with the State contributory pension in that regard.”