Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
Updated 10.30am
SOCIAL PROTECTION MINISTER Regina Doherty has hit out at Fianna Fáil as the Government looks set to lose a vote in the Dáíl over the state pension system.
The vote centres around a motion brought by Fianna Fáil which would reinstate a full State pension for those who took time out from work to raise a family prior to 1994. Those people, therefore, paid less tax during their working lives.
Hitting back, Fianna Fáil’s spokesperson on employment affairs and social protection Willie O’Dea said that he was “taken aback” by Doherty’s criticisms and called them “reprehensible”.
As things stand, there are around 36,000 pensioners, most of whom are women, who are receiving around €30 less a week compared to most other State pensions.
Sinn Féín is expected to support Fianna Fáíl’s motion.
However, Regina Doherty launched an attack against Fianna Faíl as she appeared on Morning Ireland. Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath had earlier been on the same programme speaking about why his party is putting forward the motion.
Doherty said that the anomaly in the pension system has been known since 2010 – a time when Fianna Fáil was in power. The minister added that she could not guarantee that the problem would be fixed in 2018 – something which Fianna Fáil has called for.
Doherty added that it was also not yet known exactly how much it would cost to rectify the problem. However, she did not hold back on attacking McGrath’s party.
Speaking on Morning Ireland, she said: “There are some 40,000 people who are being treated differently. The system isn’t kind to them. We’ve all recognised this.”
Doherty said that the problem with the pension system wasn’t addressed in Budget 2018 is because the exact amount of money it would cost to fix the system was not known. It is still not known how much it will cost the State.
She added: “Fianna Fáíl can’t be trusted with the economy. The pension system is complex. When you tinker with one thing, another anomaly can spring up somewhere. We’re going to be very careful.”
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke, O’Dea retorted that he wanted to “unequivocally state” that the matter was raised by Fianna Fáil with Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe before the budget.
“I resent Regina Doherty’s remarks that Fianna Fáil can’t be trusted,” the Limerick TD said. “Fianna Fáil has adhered faithfully to the confidence and supply agreement for the past 18 months, often in the teeth of opposition and upset from our supporters who would prefer if we brought down the government.
It ill-behoves a minister who is a beneficiary of that to make a statement like that. I would ask Regina Doherty to reflect on that statement… She was happy enough to trust us to vote her into office and keep her in office for the past 18 months. I would ask the Taoiseach to disassociate himself [from these remarks].
The pension issue was under the spotlight last week when Paschal Donohoe, fresh from announcing his first budget, took a call from a Longford listener on RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke show.
The caller, Eamon Tynan, said his wife is losing out on €35 a week on her State pension because she had a summer job in the 1960s when she was a secondary school student.
Minister Donohoe described the situation as “bonkers”, though the Taoiseach has since clarified that the minister was referring to the law which forced women to leave the workforce when the got married.
With reporting from Sean Murray
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Regina represents the corruption at the heart of the 26 counties. In what other western democracy might a government minister get away with having members of the police take someone aside at an airport as they attempted to board a flight and issue them with a caution, simply for being critical of her.
@Tír Eoghain Gael: Willy O Dea isn’t much better, part of the government that ruined the economic and social fabric of the country, and Regina is carrying on that policy through lack of imagination,principle and fear of her overlords in the EU. Will it change? not a hope, “shur isn’t she lovely, and didn’t Willy get that pothole fixed last week” is the attitude of a lot of voters here. Two terms in office is all they should be allowed and sacked if they cannot do the job they were elected to do, and i don’t mean sacked at the next election….I mean sacked on the spot, and a by-election held, give them a taste of what the rest of us have to tolerate.
@zippo: is this willie 100 million to his mates for evoting machines odea? Why isnt he in a wet dungeon somewhere eating stale bread?
@Tír Eoghain Gael: this is the same Minister that breached section 31 of corporate tax law!!! She should be sacked
Here’s an idea, why not fund the fix by taking it from TD’s exorbitant pensions. Two birds with one stone and all that.
@Keith Twamley: Why not stop paying pensions in Uganda.
Is it a fact the shinners proposed this previously, and Fianna Fáil wouldn’t support it.
If that’s true then it’s a party without principle
@Benjamin Dolan:
Yes. Last December.
Gavan Reilly has a succinct explanation of it on twitter today here –
@Benjamin Dolan: SF is a party with principle. They support murders and criminals
@Benjamin Dolan: That has bee true for decades Benjamin.
@Brinster: That isn’t what Gavan said at all. He explicitly clarifies FF did not vote against the motion they instead tabled an edit for a rewording which SF then proceeded to vote against. SF’s proposal never actually reached a vote for FF to vote against since FF’s amendment was passed before it could.
@Rochelle: Rochelle – the question was did SF table a motion which FF failed to support?
That is EXACTLY what happened.
FF did not support the SF motion and instead substituted their own wording.
You’ve misread the opening comment.
This problem was made 100% worse in 2012 with Joan Burtons changes.
Just reading about Austria, population 8.7 million and 183 seats in parliament. Ireland, population 4.6 million and 158 seats in parliament. In comparison, we should have only 91 seats and are over represented from Dail to councils.
I do a lot of that myself, Regina. Especially when I hear your voice. Ahgggggh!
@Con Murphy: Careful, if you criticise Regina, she’ll send her friends in the Gardai to come and harass you.
http://www.thejournal.ie/regina-doherty-garda-complaint-blogger-3482139-Jul2017/
@Tír Eoghain Gael:
Regina is well named. Queen of F G. They might even put her head on a stamp if they are left in power much longer.
Fine Gael missed a golden opportunity in the Budget to rectify this issue . Now Fianna Fáil are jumping on the bandwagon mainly because of the publicity it got recently from a husband whose wife was penalized because she had a summer job 50 years ago. Joan Burton made it worse when she made the changes in 2012.Why because little people don’t count. We didn’t know how much the bail out was going to cost either and look how that turned out. All the parties are at fault so fix it and stop talking about it.
@Aine O Connor:
Even at a very rough estimate this would cost almost half a billion to “rectify”.
There wasn’t that much room in the Budget.
€35 x 52 weeks x 40,000 x 6 years back to 2012 = €437 million.
That’s equivalent to raising the 5% USC rate to 8%. Would you back this raise in taxes to pay for it Aine?
@Brinster: Why not start streamlining public services? Get rid of complete wasters in the public sector? That would save billions – not on the table though because that would require leadership.
@Brinster: Save 651 million on overseas aid and stop paying for pensions in Uganda.
@Brinster: How much taxpayers money was wasted on IW by Fine Gael?
@Shakka1244: ” Why not start streamlining public services?”
How do you think the unions would react to that?
Think UNITE would allow it?
Think SF and FF would row in behind such an initiative for the good of the country?
@Brinster: You are all over this thread like a bad rash, please therefore have the decency to acknowledge my question above. You seem to be focused on cost cutting measures going forward as a means to solve our impending pension problem and have no problem slagging off the contributions of SF & FF supporters. I put it to you about the hundreds of millions that Fine Gael wasted by setting up a metered billing company called Irish Water, money which is needed elsewhere and how that money could have benefitted our state. Obviously this question doesent suit your extremely right wing Fine Gael principles.
@Brinster: They could make some effort to Recife some of it. Regina Doherty had the gall to say that when it is reviewed it will only apply to new entrants so the actual women who at the moment are losing out will not be included. You could not make it up.
@Niall Quinlan: Niall. I’m not FG. I’m also not right wing. I’m pro immigration. Pro socialised medicine. Pro personal freedom. Pro religious freedom – even if that religion is Islam. None of those are right wing stances.
I find your tone aggressive so didn’t respond to a completely irrelevant, argumentative nonsense about IW. For the record Irish Water was a shambles.
If you want a reasponse in future try to abuse me less and engage more. Have a nice evening.
@Shakka1244:
Do you not know that it is impossible to sack a public or civil servant! Jobs for life.
@Brinster: Says you who tried to divert the topic at hand by bringing Northern Irish politics into the discussion ( see your above comments) and ate now accusing me of using an aggressive tone? Get off the stage with your massive ego, goodnight.
@Brinster: No one is advising it be rectified in one go. The process could be done in several stages. Putting current pensioners on the pre-Burton rate would cost less than €55 million this year (even without accounting for the tax taken back from the extra taxable income in the hands of many of the recipients)
She is a whiner. They don’t know how much it will cost. Well it’s the amount of pensioners multiplied by €35.
@Rory: long term what will it cost I expect is the issue. They won’t all die at the end of the year and presumably more and more become eligible in the coming years, increases will also occur.
@Rory: No, it’s not. Which is why you’re not a T.D.
@Rory:
“They don’t know how much it will cost. Well it’s the amount of pensioners multiplied by €35.”
This is just completely wrong. Completely over simplified. Could be more than €35 for some and will be less for others. Plus some of those disadvantaged by this will be independently wealthy.
But to indulge you -
35 x 52 weeks x 40,000 x 6 years back to 2012 = €437 million. Got a spare half billion Rory?
That’s equivalent to raising the 5% USC rate to 8%. Would you back this raise in taxes to pay for it Rory?
This needs to be addressed but we should fist of all find out actually how much it is gong to cost and secondly should means test those who were disadvantaged, restoring amounts to those worst off first.
@Brinster: did you not just disprove the ministers point. There is a very simple calculation, the beginnings of which is number of pensioners, minus average of number of deaths in a year, plus average number to join the system, multiplied by the differential these people are experiencing. You even made an attempt at it. Don’t support either party, but she knows the cost, we all know it needs to be addressed asap, running away from the issue only exacerbates the suffering of those affected. €30 is a lot of money on the pension, it’s the heating or the food bill. Being punished for starting work early, or taking time out for kids, is horrendously unfair. Where can we find the money? That’s another issue but one we can’t as a society ignore.
@Carmelisa Dunne Fitzgerald:
But that’s just the point, Carmelisa. “Back of the envelope” calcs and rushed legislative changes are what brought about this situation in the first place.
We’ll only make it worse if we rush through a “fix” now.
I completely agree it needs to be addressed but why not start with a means test for those disadvantaged.
Why is figuring out who needs help the most a bad thing?
@Brinster: I think we need at least one Quango to deal with this.
@Shakka1244: Only one?.
@Rory: The situation is far more complex than that. Many pensioners are on less than €160 weekly as a result of the averaging tool being applied to their PRSI contributions when dated back to the day they first had even a summer job and the situation was made worse by the 2012 decision made by Joan Burton.
There is a two tier pension system in this country which needs to be addressed and the can has been kicked down the road often enough. Some pensioners who only have 500 PRSI contributions are on full pensions whereas many with far more contributions are on much less.
There was no problem raiding the National Pension Reserve Fund to bail out Bankers, Gambling Bond Holders and Irish Water – in fact everything but what it was set up for.
Successive Governments knew this time bomb was ticking but still went ahead and raided the pension fund. How many millions are being spend opposing the decision on Apple Tax and refunding households for Irish Water payments. When there’s a will this Government can and do find a way.
Time for them to get the will to fix this one and give justice to pensioners many of who were paying over 50% of their wages in tax during the previous recession.
@Mary Dunphy:
Ms Doherty .. No, the pension system is not complex.
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” ~ Albert Einstein
No man-made device or system cannot be fully understood by the ordinary man in the street .. or woman for that matter.
Saying something is complex is a feeble excuse to deflect from its bonkersness.
Well healed middle class pensioners with good private pensions get an additional 2 free welfare pensions .. 1 for PRSI for themselves and 1 for their “dependent” partner who may never have worked, while women who may have worked a few weeks during school which is used to calculate their pension entitlement are refused a proper pension. Bonkers.
PRSI is an insurance system for job loss or failed private pension – not an entitlement.
The Government have no money … it belongs to you the taxpayer … you have to pay the 2 additional middle class welfare pensions … Bonkers.
Did someone say ‘€16,000 payment with no legal basis’?
@Justin Forde: That would be a ball park figure of the amount pensioners have been done out of over the past 4/5 years.
@Mary Dunphy: just for clarification, this was in relation to the illegal payments that Regina Doherty received as Chief Government Whip.
The politicians should also examine the disgraceful amount of money paid to to their own pensions.also.
This was raised nearly three years ago and I myself wrote to everyone I thought of with no luck. I would like to correct one thing however. It had been stated that people didn’t get the full pension because they did not have enough contributions. I myself had almost 2,500 when you only needed 520. The problem is the average per year which if you go back to your first job means that you are taking in child rearing years. This average was doubled from 24 to 48 in 2012. I had 39 and lost 23 euro a week.
It never ceases to amaze me how some pensions, (politicians and civil servants mostly) are untouchable, while others can be dipped into, reduced, changed at will. It’s a great little country that way.
LIEBOUR added to all this and still exist ,
On the very edge mind you by the tips..
FF move with change.. FLIP FLOP Party..
FG don’t like to upset elitist situ as is..
We keep putting FF FG LIEBOUR in power almost 100 years later :-(
Find a big tree regina and apologies profusely to it for wasting it’s oxygen, you braindead excuse of a person.
@Trevor Hayden: wow… you okay hun??
@Fox: Yeah not a bother, I’m sure regina’s iPhone 7 can calculate the amount of female pensioner’s multiplied by €35 and rectify the problem.
@Trevor Hayden:
Except that’s a huge over-simplification
@Fox:
Doherty is a nasty piece of work. Opportunistic, narcissistic, unsympathetic and dangerously ambitious.
Please stop voting for her.
@Trevor Hayden: Careful Trevor. Especially if you have travel plans. Look what happened to social media blogger Catherine Kelly at Dublin Airport in June this year. She was approached by Special Branch detectives and cautioned because she had the audacity to write about Regina Doherty and her husbands’ tax defaulting activities when their business failed. Ruth Coppinger brought it up in the Dail and wrote to Charlie Flanagan the Justice Minister about Miss Kellys ordeal and guess what the outcome was?….. Yep, absolutely nothing….
@Trevor Hayden: nice one Trevor, just watch your back the Dail storm troopers might be around
@Kevin Mullen: Unfortunately too late kevin, I’ve had various threats already.
@Bat Daly: I never voted for her, this comment was just over the top.
Go Home Regina with your mock indignation, you are an absolute waste of space and I sincerely hope that you will be getting erased from politics when the next election comes.
For a majority male party Fianna Fail have no balls. Just pull the plug on this shambolic circus of mirrors.
36,000 x €30 = €1,080,000 a week. 52 weeks in a year equals €56,160,000
@Potatoe-man: Don’t forget the folks, that become eligible every year and add that to the existing sum.
@Stephen murphy: and estimated how many will die (or emigrate, though that seems less likely).
@Potatoe-man: What about back money? What would that cost?
@Stephen murphy: Don’t forget the folks that die and are taken away
She’s obviously not worried about her pension
Dis, Dat,dense and doze Joanie
Regina is the Donald Frump of Fine Gael.
The government support women who stay at home to bring up a family as long as it doesn’t cost them money.
I shout at the radio too. I know I’m in bad shape when I thump it too. But it’s when I hear it shout back to me that I realise…I haven’t been taking my medication.
close direct provision,send anyone home who has been refused entry instead of paying them a weekly allowance ,thats 150 million a year that could go to restoring the pension ,now that didnt take long. what a joke this country is,we have a known nutter who wants to kill people in our courts was thrown out of other countrys has served time for all the worst crimes fighting his deportation with free legal aid from our goverment the ones who are trying to remove him.
Thank you Brinster,
I suppose it would be confusing if we re named Fianna Fáil, mé Féin ( my self)
No money for pensioners but the TDs get their 3000 euro rise and how much did Leo award himself.That woman is a parasite
She actually shout at you and tear strips off you what a wonderful woman
FF is the reason that our finances are so bad.
We have over 200Bn in National Debt because of them.
This is a fake news story.
FG and FF are in coalition with each other.
This is a pretend squabble to hide the fact that they are in coalition with each other.
Regina Doherty is against the free press- as seen by her attempts to silence a journalist for reporting on her.
It’s no wonder that that other opponent of the free press Denis O’Brien owns the FG party.
My mother realised she would not have enough contributions to get a full pension she went back and got them. Not sure why other people didn’t check their own finances. The rules aren’t new and they will tell you if you ask
Regina spouts it out without thinking, not for the first time I might add. No cop on I say.
Makes you wonder with all this grime and ineptness rolled into gross shamology by government that no breakthrough party could form and quickly be reckoned with like so many other countries have seen
Maybe I am missing the point in relation to how much reinstatement of a full pension will cost, but surly the point is mute as the Govt. have “saved” millions since this was introduced by underpaying those that they now seek to reinstate full pensions too????
The former Queen of Labour had her mits all over this. What an example of feminism.
Ms Doherty .. No, the pension system is not complex.
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” ~ Albert Einstein
No man-made device or system cannot be fully understood by the ordinary man in the street .. or woman for that matter.
Saying something is complex is a feeble excuse to deflect from its bonkersness.
Well healed middle class pensioners with good private pensions get an additional 2 free welfare pensions .. 1 for PRSI for themselves and 1 for their “dependent” partner who may never have worked, while women who may have worked a few weeks during school which is used to calculate their pension entitlement are refused a proper pension. Bonkers.
PRSI is an insurance system for job loss or failed private pension – not an entitlement.
The Government have no money … it belongs to you the taxpayer … you have to pay the 2 additional middle class welfare pensions … Bonkers.
This situation should be addressed right NOW. All people affected should be returned their money plus their backpayment (in lots of cases).The next general election may not be too far away and the sight of 42,000 people plus marching on Leinster House demanding what is rightfully theirs and no votes for these politicians might make them sit up and listen.They could bail out the bankers and of course the water fiasco.No doubt their own pensions are ringfenced and untouchable.
have your say