A cut to the old-age pension in December’s Budget cannot be ruled out, the Minister for Social Protection, Éamon Ó Cuív, said today.
The cuts, if carried though, would signal a change in Government policy. In last December’s Budget, old-age pensioners were one of the only groups of which escaped reductions in the social welfare Budget.
In a series of media interviews, the Minister said he could not exclude one particular group from cuts on the grounds of their age.
“I am not ruling anything in or anything out in relation to social welfare changes, until I have all the information and (have) looked at all of the parameters” he said.
“Pensions have to be taken into account in the mix. They are €5 billion of the €22 billion we pay out of the social welfare budget”.
“I’m not saying they will be cut; but I cannot also rule out absolutely the possibility that they might be” he said on Newstalk.
Mr Ó Cuív’s comments followed an instruction earlier this week by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to his Cabinet colleagues that they must come up with departmental cuts of €3 billion within a month.
Fine Gael’s spokeswoman on social affairs Olywn Enright accused the Government of targeting the most vulnerable in society in order to make savings.
“It’s deeply depressing that just a few weeks into his new job as Minister, Eamon Ó Cuív is already talking about cutting pensions,” she said.
She said the social welfare system was in urgent need of reform but that cutting pensions was the wrong approach.
An organisation campaigning for older people was also highly critical of Mr Ó Cuív’s comments.
Older and Bolder said that any cuts would have a significant and detrimental impact on older people’s lives.
Its director Patricia Conboy said that recent research indicated that older people were already financially stretched by the recession.
“The facts show that older people are concentrated in the lower income brackets and they are heavily reliant on State pensions and other income transfers like the fuel allowance and free travel,” she said.
Older and Bolder represents a total eight NGOs that campaign on behalf of older citizens.