Sir, – The fact that the Government changed the rules for the age of entitlement to the contributory State pension has gone largely unnoticed. In 2014 approximately 15,000 people who were due to retire on reaching their 65th year will not now be entitled to their pension until they are 66. Many of these people will not have a private pension to supplement their State pension and will have no income for 2014. Those who have some form of private pension had built the State pension into the overall equation of the affordability of annuities or Approved Retirement Funds (ARFs), so these calculations are now meaningless.
The State and the employers have an obligation to these people to resolve this issue, as the timeframe allowed to bridge the gap is totally inadequate. – Yours, etc,