Retired members of the country's largest trade union have called for the State pension to be increased to 40 per cent of average industrial earnings from its current level of 33 per cent.
Siptu's Retired Members' Section passed a motion at its national conference today calling for the increase.
There was some debate over the motion with some members saying the increase was not enough and that the State pension should be linked to the national minimum wage.
SIPTU General Secretary Joe O'Flynn
Ross Connolly, Secretary of the Retired Members Section, argued that would involve a 40 per cent increase in the pension and was not a realistic claim to make under the current partnership agreement Towards 2016.
Conolly also said it was essential that a motion was passed at the conference or Siptu would have no current policy on the issue. He said the increase would bring payments to retired workers up to about €240 a week.
Also speaking at the conference, Siptu general secretary Joe O'Flynn said the only way to stop ill-treatment of older patients was to properly fund public nursing homes.
"If the care and attention we bestow on our elderly citizens is a measure of the values we hold as a society, then the Government rate very poorly indeed," said SIPTU General Secretary Joe O'Flynn.
"It is 15 months since an independent inspectorate was promised in the wake of the Leas Cross scandal and we are still waiting."
"One reason for the lack of rigour in the regime is the fundamental conflict between the Health Service Executive (HSE) as an inspection agency of nursing homes for the elderly on one hand, and the fact that it relies on those same nursing homes to supplement the totally inadequate public nursing care services on the other."
Niall Crowley, Chief Executive Officer of the Equality Authority, said that "ageism is deeply ingrained in our common-sense" as a society and that the largest number of cases before the authority related to discrimination on the grounds of age.