Sir, – Full credit to The Irish Times and Martin Wall for bringing to light the kind of official thinking that will leave older people aghast and fearful for their future security ("Cuts to State funding must be considered, review finds", Front Page, December 29th).
It beggars belief that officials at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, who will reap the benefits of gold-plated pensions themselves, have the gall to suggest that the weakest and most vulnerable in society must pay for the privileges enjoyed by 300,000 public sector workers – privileges that include a degree of security that is non-existent in the real world.
We are all well aware that we are sitting on a pension time bomb and that demographic changes are pulling in the wrong direction, but pruning must begin in the areas where fruit has been most abundant. In the Republic of Ireland, that means rebalancing the scales so that the public and private sectors share equal reward and responsibility for the basic State pensions of those who are no longer able to work. – Yours, etc,
NIALL GINTY,
Killester,Dublin 5.
Sir, – In playing her good cop role, the Minister for Social Protection gave reassurances that the pension would not be cut and that the current rates would be "protected" ("State pension will not be cut, insists Joan Burton", December 29th).
She failed to mention what measures were planned to restore the value of the pension given that it has not been increased in six years and persons in that group have suffered cuts in fringe supports and have had property tax, and soon water charges, extracted from their meagre incomes. – Yours, etc,
JIM O’SULLIVAN,
Rathedmond,
Sligo.
Sir, – I worked for 52 years, contributing all of that time toward my old-age pension. It has always struck me as wrong that those contributions were being spent by government as soon as collected and nothing put aside. To benefit from a full contributory pension I paid the higher social insurance rates over those years. It is interesting that the mandarins now making recommendations for its reduction have not borne the burdens of high social insurance payments historically (although that system has recently changed).
They have a cheek to be making such recommendations. Go to those people who do not contribute to society, face up to them and make them pay a fair share.
Attacking the elderly who have been compliant throughout their lives is a low policy. – Yours, etc,
HARRY MULHERN,
Millbrook Road,
Dublin 13.