The 2010 national pension framework stated people should be confident and secure about their expectations on retirement. The Government has committed to reforming the State pension system from 2020 onwards.

Yesterday, I received an answer to a parliamentary question on this issue which states that the proposal will not be finalised until after a public consultation later this year. While I welcome the public consultation on this matter, there is much uncertainty around exactly what these changes will entail. If these changes are only finalised at the end of the 2018 or in 2019 and they are due to take effect in 2020, this leaves very little time for anybody to prepare for retirement, especially given that mandatory retirement age is still legal in Irish employment contracts. What does the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection intend to do for the first generation of pensioners from 2020 onwards so that they can plan ahead for these changes and will not be faced with significant shortfalls in their pension expectations with little or no time to adjust?

As set out in the response to the Deputy's parliamentary question, there will be a lengthy public consultation on this matter during which we will conduct meetings and negotiations with all of the public stakeholders and all of the people who have not yet retired. The purpose and the premise of the contributory State pension is to provide for people in their retirement. We have no intention of stripping people of what they are entitled to, but we do intend to devise a mechanism over the coming months that will be announced at the end of this, which it is hoped will be ratified by this House, and that will prepare people for what will be a fair and sustainable pension system based on the social insurance fund. Nobody should be in fear of something that has not yet been designed. We will always have a non-contributory State pension in this country to ensure that we have a minimum standard of living for people in the older years.