Submission 310
May 08
Green Paper Submission
I am writing to you in the hope that you will grant the Old Age Pension to Cross Border workers who have more than earned the right to it. I am using my own life-story to illustrate their case.
After graduating with an MA degree in 1958, I thought in England for six years. I returned in 1964 to take a Higher Diploma in Education so that I could teach here, I taught for two years 65 and 66 and then took a job in Derry where I taught from 1967 until ire tired in 1989. Since 1967 I have resident in Ireland (where I was born in 1936) paying taxes on my earnings to my own government – sometimes at the rate of 70%.
It seems crazy to me that in return for all those taxes paid over the past forty plus years I have managed to reach my seventies without my own government ever giving me one cent in return. I don’t know how many others are in the same situation but one is too many. Twice before I have managed to get a similar injustice put right.
In 1965 when students discovered that the government wouldn’t be paying them one penny during their first year as full time secondary teachers, they talked of marches and demonstrations in the streets of Dublin. I suggested I write to the Minister for Finance to arrange a meeting. They agreed. Within a fortnight five us met George Colley in his office. He pointed out the difficulties, union opposition to any changes in existing circumstances etc., but all other years have benefited since.
Again in 1974, I was warned that the Double taxation Agreement would mean all Cross Border Workers would owe our own government a year’s back tax overnight. One letter to the Minister for Finance got that unfair bill halved.
Now for a third time, I find myself hoping to put right another inherited social injustice. I’ve been told I can get a Bus Pass and a few other concessions if I apply for them- but you will have to act on this Old Age Pension issue to see that an injustice is put right. Cross Border Workers resident here deserve some financial return for all those extra taxes paid to our own government over so many years but not one cent do they get.
