Sir, – I was saddened to see the proposed reduction in contributory pensions for those with incomplete PRSI contributions, which was slipped in at the end of a Budget which claimed not to be touching pensions. This reduction could be up to 14 per cent in some cases. It is particularly sad to see such a measure brought in by a woman Labour minister as it will disproportionately affect one group: older women who took time out of the workforce to raise their families.
The spin put on the measure suggests that those with broken PRSI records are less deserving than those whose contributions are rock-solid for 40 years and that such people “chose” – the weasel word of our era – to have a lesser involvement in the workforce. It’s salutary to remember the conditions in the 1960s and 1970s when those retiring in 2012 would have started work. A proportion of these older women would have been caught by the Civil Service marriage bar – which made retirement on marriage mandatory. A larger proportion were caught by the less official bars of no maternity leave, little childcare, hardly any part-time work.
Some of the women with broken PRSI records cared for disabled children or elderly parents as well as bringing up their families – most were glad to do so, but they were also glad to have a chance during the boom of re-entering the workforce and having a pension in their own right. To have that pension reduced at nine months’ notice by a woman Labour minister suggests that all the fine speeches about the benefits of individualised payments, equality in the workforce and the value of caring work were just so much empty rhetoric.
I am surprised and saddened that none of our national women’s organisations have put these points to the Minister and the public. – Yours, etc,