Paul Murphy: Calls to Restore Pension Age to 65, Slams Government

Just at the outset, I want to make a point which is relevant to this motion, but it's actually relevant to a number of motions that have been passed by the Dáil now over the past number of weeks, which is that it seems to me that the government is taking an extraordinarily cynical approach whenever motions come forward from the opposition now, where they just vote for them with no intention of doing anything about it, because they don't want the bad news headlines of saying that they're against something. I mean, they're going to vote tomorrow for the SOC Dems National Maternity Hospital motion, they voted for the last Ciancorla and others motion on the National Maternity Hospital a few weeks ago, they voted for our bill in terms of the right to housing, no intention of doing any of these things in my opinion, and in the Minister's speech today, what he said was we're going to vote for the motion, which is very clear in terms of the pension age coming back to 1965, but simultaneously he said something that entirely contradicts that, which is that we're in favour of the pension commission continuing its work, we don't want to interfere with the work of the pension commission, etc. But there's no need, the pension commission is a tool to take something out of the political arena because of the pressure that the establishment parties came under in the course of the last election. If you're actually in favour of the pension age coming back to 1965, well then we can just pass that into law. And it is incredibly cynical what the government has been doing over the last while, whereby they've copped on to the idea that voting against stuff that is popular is a bad idea, and instead they just allow everything to pass with simply no intention of doing anything about it. The fundamental point here is that instead of increasing the retirement age, which I believe is still what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would like to do, if they can politically get away with it, we should bring it back down at least to 65. As a result of Fine Gael and Labour's decision to raise the age to 66, there are now 4,065 year olds in this state out of work, unable to get the state pension and having to sign on effectively for job seekers instead, getting 45 euros a week less than the pension. These are people who have worked all their lives, left their job at 65, and being left to twist in the wind, unable to get a job, but not allowed to get the state pension. It's simply not good enough, the government should hang its head in shame, and it should be reversed immediately. I think it says something deeply profound and bad about capitalism, that people living longer is a crisis. It's a crisis. We have a demographic time bomb. The idea that people could retire at 65 and live a comfortable retirement for a number of years is a crisis. In fact, these workers who have been incredibly productive over the course of their lifetime, have created huge profits for the bosses, etc., it's unthinkable that actually we could make the employers, the bosses, those who made the profits from their work, pay for comfortable retirement through increased employers, PRSI, for example. Ireland is a wealthy country. In fact, for a person, we are the fifth richest country in the world. But you wouldn't think of it from looking at how the government treats our older workers. Workers should be entitled to retire in comfort, but instead the government is attempting or would like to push it up 67, 68. We can afford a decent retirement for all workers at 65, a universal basic pension. But the problem is that Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael are more concerned with protecting the billionaires from taxes than they are with supporting the workers who have actually created that wealth, and their pension is part of their wages. It's deferred wages. I welcome that Sinn Féin have brought this motion forward, pushing to reduce the pension age to 65. I would make a point to Sinn Féin that the real attitude of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael on this issue, you should draw some conclusions from that. The Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael are not on the side of ordinary workers, pensioners or otherwise, and any coalition or compromise with these parties of the rich would mean betraying those who are looking for real change. It's why we do not need and we should have a ruling out of coalition with Fianna Fáil or Fianna Gael, and instead a fight for a left government with socialist policies to stand up to the billionaires and bring down the pension age for workers.