Election 2020: People Before Profit pledge to reverse pension age increase

The People Before Profit party has said that the “pensions timebomb” is a “ruse to attack worker’s pension entitlements” as they pledged to reverse the planned increase in the pension age.

The party launched its charter of workers’ rights on Monday morning, which includes promises to bring in a living wage of €15 an hour, reduce the working week and introduce mandatory maternity leave on full rates of pay.

On the planned increase in the pension age to 67, Richard Boyd Barrett said that People Before Profit would make employers pay higher levels of PRSI to offset the cost of bringing the pension age back to 65.

According to an actuarial review of the social insurance fund, the low ratio of working-age people to pensioners would present significant funding challenges, with the fund forecast to accumulate a potential deficit of up to €335 billion over the next 50 years.

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“Economists and SIPTU have done studies to disagree with that actuarial review that says that you can’t just project ahead to the 20 or 30 or even 50 years and say that there will be this void in the ability to pay proper pensions without measuring the productivity of workers and the potential for more workers coming into the country,” party TD Brid Smith said.

“So there’s an argument about that and it shouldn’t be automatically accepted that there is a pension time bomb about to happen.We see it as pure daylight robbery on workers. It’s not accurate to say that there’s a pension time bomb.”

Richard Boyd Barrett said that Ireland has “one of the youngest populations anywhere in Europe. Why, given that we have a younger demographic than the rest of Europe are we going to have the highest pension entitlement age in Europe. Really it’s just a ruse and an excuse to attack worker’s pension entitlements.”

Pay gaps

People Before Profit has also promised to close the gender pay gap and introduce financial penalties for companies that are over-reliant on temporary contracts.

“The hidden story of the Irish economy is that despite record economic growth and the so-called recovery, which workers have actually brought about, they have not got their fair share of that recovery or economic growth,” Mr Boyd Barrett said.

“Irish workers are the most productive anywhere in the western world but they have the lowest share of the national economic cake. So while the recovery in this country has been achieved on the backs of workers, workers have been robbed of the benefits of that recovery which is going largely to property speculators vulture funds and corporations that don’t pay their fair share of tax. Irish workers are working longer and harder for less.”

He also said that there is a “historic shift happening in Irish politics away from the two party system of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.”