STATE PENSION:GROUPS LOBBYING on behalf of older people have said they are disappointed the Government has agreed to freeze the State pension until 2015 as part of the EU-International Monetary Fund (IMF) deal.
Age Action Ireland said yesterday the Government has signed away its “responsibility for some of the most vulnerable in society” by freezing the State pension without knowing how much inflation would rise during this period.
Eamon Timmins, spokesman for Age Action, said the organisation was concerned that sharp rises in the price of fuel, healthcare and health insurance would result in greater numbers of older people living below the poverty line by 2015.
“Age Action hopes that, while it has signed away the authority to increase State pensions until 2015, the Government will now give a commitment not to cut the State pension in the intervening period,” he said.
The advocacy group Older Bolder said the worst possible scenario was if the EU-IMF agreement had stipulated a mandatory decrease in the State pension.
But it said it was concerned that a pension freeze would result in more older people living below the poverty line in coming years.
“Some 88 per cent of older people are at risk of poverty before transfers such as the State pension. This is happening at a time when other health and social care supports are at risk,” said Patricia Conboy, director of Older Bolder, which is an alliance of eight non-governmental organisations in the age sector.
“We are deeply concerned that people will be affected by this,” Ms Conboy said.
The Government confirmed yesterday that it has agreed with the EU-IMF not to increase the nominal value of the State pension until 2015. “The period of the plan is budget 2011, and the three budgets thereafter. That is budget 2012, 2013 and 2014,” said a Government spokeswoman.
The Government has also agreed to tighten the rules around unemployment benefit and apply sanctions to beneficiaries of welfare not complying with job search rules and recommendations for participation in labour market programmes.
Social Justice Ireland has claimed that “the insult to Ireland’s poor and vulnerable people originally perpetrated by EU commissioner for economic and monitory affairs, Mr Olli Rehn, when he refused to meet representatives of these groups, has been repeated and worsened by the terms of the bailout agreement”.
The group’s director Fr Seán Healy said “the terms of the bailout programme . . . will damage the poor, the sick, the vulnerable and the unemployed”.
It was totally unacceptable that the European Commission, the IMF and the Government develop and implement a programme which will see Ireland’s weakest groups having to pay for the reckless actions of greedy bankers, incompetent regulators and an inept government, Fr Healy added.