PR: Crisis in Pensions Looming

PR: Pensions Crisis will not be averted until anti-family measures reversed

Stop-gap measures will not meet the looming pensions crisis

Date: 22 September 2005

The Mother and Child Campaign said today that mandatory pensions and other stop-gap measures would not adequately meet the looming pensions crisis. The Campaign spokes woman Niamh Ui Bhriain said that Minister Seamus Brennan should take immediate steps to reverse anti-family measures such as tax-individualisation, which had contributed to the demographic shift at the core of what was now becoming a crisis regarding future pension payments.

Ms Ui Bhriain referred the Minister to the recent report of the EU Commssion: Confronting demographic change: a new solidarity between the generations. That report confirms that the EU is facing an unprecedented demographic crisis and that immigration can no longer be relied on to mitigate the impact of falling birth rates. It also predicts that despite the rise of retirement age the falling population will cause annual growth to be halved by 2040. Faced with this crisis the Irish Government falls back helplessly on the Lisbon Agenda, which Charlie Mc Creevy so slavishly followed in introducing tax individualisation to penalise single-income families; an agenda which will of course, in the long-term, exacerbate the problem.

Successive Irish governments have wilfully adopted policies discriminating against the family and disparaging mothers at home. Mr Brennan and his predecessors allow themselves to be henpecked by the taxpayer-funded feminists in the National Women’s Council while they ignore the voices of mothers who make real sacrifices to provide the best possible care for the future tax (and pension) payers of the State.

While other EU members states are anxiously introducing family friendly policies our hapless Minister is fiddling while Rome burns. The Mother and Child Campaign called on Mr Brennan to tackle the root of the pension crisis before it is too late.

ENDS

For further information please contact Niamh on 01 8730465