The Progressive Democrats have kept past promises to increase old age pensions during the last decade, party leader and Tánaiste Michael McDowell said last night.
Just days before the party's annual conference, Mr McDowell has pledged that the State contributory pension would jump to €300 over the five-year lifetime of the next government from €209 today. Voters, said the Minister, would reject Fine Gael and Labour criticisms of this proposal, just as they rejected criticisms of the party's commitment made in 1997 to bring State pensions to £100 a week.
Fianna Fáil yesterday maintained a distance from the PDs' proposal, noting that all political parties are engaged in a season of political conferences that require striking policy presentations to be made.
Questioned about his €300-a-week pension plan yesterday, Mr McDowell said: "Older people have seen many a politician come and go and are therefore perfectly entitled to cast a sceptical eye over promises made by other political parties that were never fulfilled. That wasn't about trying to buy the election. It was about trying to do justice to pensioners and people who were dependent on pensions for their only means of living."
Currently, 470,600 over-65s qualify for €2,680 million worth of contributory pensions, while €920 million more is paid out by the Department of Social and Family Affairs in non-contributory pensions.
Under Mr McDowell's plan, the pensions bill will rise to €5.4 billion by 2012, without taking account of inflation, though the real cost would be even higher since approximately 80,000 extra people will be then eligible.
Questioned about the PDs' plan, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said the Government has increased pensions by 7.5 per cent in each budget since 2002. "The proposal to go to €300 in the full tenure of an incoming government of five years would be increasing pensions annually by about 7.5 per cent, so it is not outside the bounds of possibilities taking into account other priorities," he said.
Facing questions about Labour's plan to cut taxes, Mr Cowen warned that he would be concerned "some short-term ambitions would take precedence over having a sustainable budgetary position. The idea that you can on any whim on any weekend, as Mr Rabbitte decided, to regard the exchequer as a bottomless pit that you can dip into to fund every passing whim is not a sensible or responsible approach."
The pension promise was announced in a PD paid-for supplement circulated with yesterday's Irish Independent. In it, the Progressive Democrats leader said: "It is impossible for us to repay the debt we owe to the older generation, who worked so hard in such difficult times to shape the successful country we live in today. We can, however, use the fruits of our economic boom to ensure that they are financially-equipped to live in the dignity that their immense contribution to our State deserves."
Mr McDowell said it was "beyond contradiction" that the Government parties delivered for old age pensioners in a way that no other combination of parties had ever done in the past.
Claiming that Mr Cowen had said the pension rise was "eminently doable", Mr McDowell told The Irish Times: "The real question is do we want to do it. I would appeal to the media not to view every proposal as some form of auction politics. Pensioners are entitled to know what parties propose to do in relation to their incomes."
