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Submission 99

February 2008

Green Paper submission

Homemakers Scheme   

  • I  contend that it is grossly unfair for older women not to get the  benefit of the Homemakers Scheme because it only applies to those who stayed at home to look after children after 1994.
  • It is difficult to understand  the difference between looking after children in the home before 1994 and after 1994?

I would draw your attention to Article 41 of the Constitution which states

‘In particular the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives   to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved’

It does not state that the common good can only be achieved after 1994.

Men who were unemployed had the benefit of the credit system and thus maintained their insurance record.

The Homemakers Scheme should be extended retrospectively to 1953.

Determining a pension by calculating  average contributions over  49 years e.g  17 years to 66 years

  • it is grossly unfair to take forty-nine years as the figure to calculate a pension when during the years in question women were effectively barred from the workforce due initially to having to give up their job on marriage,  then  marital status and then age.

The way of calculating pensions on the ‘average’ contributions should be abolished as it gives rise to too many anomalies.

Extending working life

It would make more sense to have PRSI contributions paid after 66 years taken into account.  There is no point in the Government ‘allowing’ people work after 65 years of age unless their social insurance contributions are reckonable for pension.  Many women work when they are over sixty-five years of age and it benefits  them to pay AI class contributions and have them reckonable for pension.

People should  be allowed pay AI contributions after 65 years if they have not accrued enough for a full pension.

I find it difficult to understand how women who had to retire from the Civil Service due to the marriage bar are being considered  in this green paper.  They were never in the social welfare system.  If they went back to insured employment following years in the home they are at an advantage as their  PRSI contributions would be reckonable from the day they started paying PRSI.  They could go back to work at 55 years of age and qualify for a full PRSI  pension.

 

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