This Bill keeps those who are on low pay and those who are compelled to live on social welfare in further poverty for another year. I will first deal with the auto-enrolment system, which leaves out those earning below €20,000. It may be the case that they will not accumulate a huge pension over their working life, but people earning below €20,000 are entitled to have the same rights as those who are earning €100,000. I fail to see why they have been excluded. They have been left behind. The worker puts in €3, the employer puts in €3 and the State puts in €1. It is a big omission to leave out low-paid and part-time workers, a lot of whom will be women. The other concern I have is the need to ensure auto-enrolment is not used in the coming years to reduce the State pension. The level of payment provided under the basic State pension has to be maintained on the basis of the contributions made by people over a 40-year period. While people should be able to retire at the age set at the moment, we should provide a greater option for people to work until they are 70, if they so wish. There is a lot of talk about a pension time bomb and how we are going to head this off. There are a lot of people working who would like to wind down. When they reach 65, they may not want to work 40 hours a week or five days a week but they might want to work 30 or 20 hours a week. We should facilitate that. They would then make a contribution to society, pay taxes and be allowed to retire on a graduated basis. With regard to the company that is running it, if this company is, as it appears to be, connected to the greater genocide effort by the terrorist State of Israel, that needs to be reviewed straight away. I wonder why the State could not operate or administer this scheme itself as it does with the State saving schemes. The Bill allows for a slight change to employers' PRSI. We have one of the lowest rates of employers' PRSI in Europe. The Social Insurance Fund is not going to be there to keep pensions going. I have mentioned one way of keeping it up but we need to increase the level of PRSI contribution from employers, particularly for high-paid workers, if the fund is to be sufficient in the coming years. On the social welfare increases, those who were in poverty are now further in poverty because we are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis like I have never seen before. There are 190,000 children in immediate poverty. They are going to sink further into it. The small increase in the budget is not going to lift those vulnerable people out of poverty. There is no cost-of-living measures or one-offs. Last year, there was money for everything because there was an election but the election is over now so there was no need for it this year. That is cynical. It is bad for politics, but it is also bad for poverty and those people who are forced to live on low incomes. We need to start doing something about the low rates of participation of disabled people in the workforce. Again, we are in the bottom of the class in the EU. We have very low participation rates. The abolition of the means test for the carer's allowance was promised and promised again. Guess what? It has not happened. It has been forgotten about. On the auto-enrolment section of the Bill, auto-enrolment needs to be revisited for those workers on less than €20,000. On PRSI contributions and the Social Insurance Fund, employers' PRSI needs to be revisited, particularly for high-paid workers. If companies can pay people €200,000, €300,000 or €400,000 a year, they can pay a bit more PRSI. On the budget, we have to do something by way of a cost-of-living package. I ask the Government to bring in a one-off measure, even at this point, to alleviate the worst excesses of the current price increases to help people over the winter period. On disabled people, the Government needs to revisit the means test. The means test for carer's allowance has to go. We need to get more disabled people into the workforce.

Sentiment score: -0.12