Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said the Government is using a \u2018sleight of hand\u2019 to down play the actual number of people affected by 2012 pension band changes. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said such an approach was pathetic and a rather crude effort to hide Ireland\u2019s growing pension inequality.<\/p>\n
Deputy Crowe made his comments following questions to the Department of Social Protection by Sinn F\u00e9in that showed more than 42,000 pensioners are now on a reduced State Pension due to critical access changes, as opposed to the reduced 35,000 number claimed by Government.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cA whopping 42,278 pensioners are now receiving a reduced State Pension as a direct result of the changes made to calculate pension bands by Labour\u2019s former leader Joan Burton. These senior citizens \u2013 the bulk of whom are women \u2013 are being discriminated against because they either took time out of work to raise a family, or perhaps took a part-time job, and they don\u2019t have the increased number of credits needed to get a full pension.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis policy change was driven by Labour\u2019s Joan Burton, when she was Minister for Social Protection, and their partners in Fine Gael in 2012. It was done with the full knowledge of the inevitable negative consequences that it would have for pensioners and women in particular.<\/p>\n
\u201cAware of this growing disparity my party, Sinn F\u00e9in, has sought an exact breakdown of the number of men and women impacted by the 2012 changes, county by county. We found out that 10,514 of these pensioners now live in Dublin – 7,116 are women and 3,398 are men.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the Social Welfare Bill going before Cabinet shortly, senior citizens need the Social Protection Minister to publically detail what plans she has to fix this blatant discrimination. If she tries to somehow justify this inequality and doesn\u2019t have a plan to urgently fix it, then Sinn F\u00e9in will seek to amend the legislation to ensure this unfair treatment of over 42,000 pensioners is finally brought to an end.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said the Government is using a \u2018sleight of hand\u2019 to down play the actual number of people affected by 2012 pension band changes. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said such an approach was pathetic and a rather crude effort to hide Ireland\u2019s growing pension inequality. Deputy Crowe made his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[355,270,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pension-inequality","category-pensions","category-social-protection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3303,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302\/revisions\/3303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}