We must restore dignity for the pension – Sherlock

Speaking on a Sinn Féin motion on the State Pension,  CorkEast TD Seán Sherlock expressed a hope that dignity can be restored to those seeking the pension and paid tribute to the work of Stop 67 in making it an election issue to act on.

“Everybody involved in the Stop67 campaign made a strong impression on all of us during the election campaign through their own stories.  I would go so far as to say that that campaign has been quite influential in bringing about an outcome that ensures people do not have to face the ignominy of appearing before a social protection office when they have 35, 40, or 50 years of labour under their belts.  That will be finally and formally be done away with now.  I put great store in the fact that the Stop67 campaign had a big influence or impact on that decision.”

 “As Deputies, we deal with social protection issues every day of the week and have an intimate knowledge of the workings of the social protection architecture.  We must ensure that the State pension transition is restored because the certainty it gives would mean much to people at the end of their working lives.  I do not say that seeking to score political points.  I say it because we hear from people about this, day in, day out, and we all bought into the Stop67 campaign and heard what those people had to say.  The system worked very well for people, by and large.  I do not see why it could not be restored or at least looked at.”

“We must be conscious, through the pensions commission, of the issue of gender and set up a system whereby women, particularly those in labour-intensive jobs or precarious employment, who come to the end of their working lives do not have to go through another firewall or have to knock down another door to get to that restful period, to which everybody expects to get when they retire from their years or decades of labour.”

“The pensions commission will hopefully come up with a set of recommendations that speak to flexibility and the issue of people who work in labour-intensive or extremely stressful jobs.  I think of front-line workers, nurses and doctors in the current climate.  If these people have done so many years’ work and are retiring well in advance of 65, a framework should be set up to protect them in order that they do not lose their entitlements.  We need a system that reflects the new paradigm in Irish society.  There is a pensions time bomb but we also need to allow for flexibility, in order to reflect the new realities of people’s working lives.  If the pensions commission deals with that it will have done a good day’s work, but only if the Minister of the day does not put its recommendations up on a shelf to gather dust.  Nobody wants that and that is not what anybody is suggesting.  The composition of the commission itself is of robust, august people who will not be found wanting when it comes to exploring all of these issues.”

“As a society, we want to ensure that the very people who contacted Deputies through the Stop67 campaign and outside of that campaign, such as the citizens who come through our constituency office doors with their own testimony on this issue, as well as the people one meets on the street, men and women, have available to them a mechanism that allows that transition to take place as seamlessly as possible, that recognises the dignity of their labour and toil and sets up a pensions architecture that is realistic, that speaks to the cost and the demographic fact that Irish people are getting older but also to the need to ensure we look after these people when they come to the end of their working lives.”