Recently, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection contacted approximately 70,000 pensioners who are affected by the pensions anomalies brought about by the then Minister for Social Protection in 2012. Many pensioners have lost out to the tune of €30 per week. Is there a timeline for when these people will have a decision? I accept it is on a case-by-case basis but when can they expect to receive their back money if they are owed it?

I thank the Deputy for raising this as I am pleased to be able to outline a timeline. The first tranche of people who will receive an increase and a pension payment backdated to last March will start receiving them next week. Of the 79,000 people involved there was a cohort where we knew why they had gaps in their service or career contribution history and we were able to fill those gaps with other information from the children's records we had. Those people will get their payments from next week. The regulations were signed this week. There is a cohort of people who have gaps on which we do not have information and we have invited them by letter to apply either online or through the paper application to fill in those gaps. That will enable us to increase their pension payments where possible. That exercise is ongoing and I hope to be able to finalise it by the end of the first quarter, which was the scheduled timeline.