Talk of cuts in the State pension must stop now according to Age Action which has described the weekly payment as a vital buffer protecting older people from poverty.
“More than half the pensioners in Ireland are dependent on the State pension as their sole means of income, and this situation is unlikely to change for the rest of their lives. Any tampering with it in this year’s Budget would cause increased hardship for some older people,” said Age Action spokesman Eamon Timmins.
The older people’s charity was responding to comments by Professor John FitzGerald of the ESRI at the McGill Summer School when he suggested the Government should examine the fairness of exempting pensioners from cuts.
The State pension had increased from a very low level in the 1990s, with the effect that the numbers of pensioners living in poverty had been cut from 44 per cent in 2001 to 10 per cent in 2009, Age Action noted. “Although the fact that one in 10 pensioners continues to live in poverty is not something to be proud of, the reduction in poverty levels among older people is a major success. We cannot now start dismantling that success and plunging older people back into poverty,” said Mr Timmins.
Many older people live on incomes which leave them hovering around the poverty line. Pensioners living alone are also one of the groups most likely to struggle to afford to heat their homes.
“Despite the public perception that older people have escaped cuts, nothing could be further from the truth,” Mr Timmins added. “From the loss of the Christmas bonus, which accounts for two per cent of their annual income, to the reduction in basic entitlements for medical card holders, the rationing of home help, meals on wheels, and essential community-based services, life has got a lot more difficult for older people in the last 12 months. For the most vulnerable of older people, to cut the State pension, as the commentators are suggesting, would be a cut too far.”
