ROSS M. CONNOLLY,
Madam, - The attention of the retired members' section of SIPTU has been drawn to an announcement by the Government in response to concerns raised by the social pillar in the national partnership agreement talks, that it is committed to raising social welfare payments to 30 per cent of average industrial earnings by 2006.
This is an astonishing admission of the Government's failure to ensure that its most marginalised and deprived older citizens are given a proper share of a growing economy by fairly relating their welfare payments to industrial earnings.
As far back as 1998, five years ago, the National Pensions Board, in its review of the Irish pension scene, the NIPPI report, recommended that the social welfare pension should be set at 34 per cent of average industrial earnings.
Not only have the previous, and present, Governments ignored this recommendation from a responsible national report, which it itself commissioned, but now it has put the objective eight years down the line and cut the percentage back to 30.
Last year, the social welfare pension was only about 26 per cent of average industrial earnings, so the Government is giving itself another four years to bring it to 30 per cent - an increase of 1 per cent a year. Hardly a mind-blowing achievement!
If this is the Government's idea of social partnership, then it is a very one-sided relationships. - Yours, etc.,
ROSS M. CONNOLLY,
Secretary,
SIPTU Retired
Members' Section,
Liberty Hall,
Dublin 1.