While the campaign to stop any cuts for pensions proved successful in the four year recovery plan, Age Action has expressed its disappointment that the Government has ‘agreed to freeze the rate of the State pension until 2015, as part of the bailout deal it has reached with the IMF and the EU’.
“To target State pensioners specifically in this way without knowing how much inflation will rise by in the years to come is to sign away their responsibility for some of the most vulnerable members of our society,” Age Action spokesman Eamon Timmins said.
The older people’s charity is concerned that sharp rises in the cost of essential items for older people, such as fuel, healthcare, and health insurance similar to those that occurred between January 2008 and July 2010, will result in greater numbers of older people living below the poverty line by 2015.
“Age Action believes that, after signing away the authority to increase State pensions until 2015, the Government must now give a commitment not to cut the State pension in the intervening period,” Mr Timmins added. “The four-year plan did not include such a commitment, yet we have since learnt that the Government has agreed not to increase the State pension for the duration of the deal.”
The agreement signed by the Government with the EU and IMF includes a commitment that the “nominal value of the State pension will not be increased over the period of the plan,” he said.
