The pensions law that leaves us shortchanged
Elderly women who took break to raise children lose out due to changes in pension calculations
THOUSANDS of women continue to be negatively affected by pension changes and laws dating back to the Marriage Bar. Now two such women have spoken out in an effort to raise awareness around inequalities in the law.
Mary Walsh and Patricia Cawley worked hard all their lives but in retirement they find themselves at a financial disadvantage.
More than 24,000 women who have retired since 2012 receive reduced pensions based on missing years of work. In some cases, those missing years were due to raising children – but in other instances they had to leave their jobs due to the Civil Service’s Marriage Bar.
The 2012 Budget changed the way entitlement to the State pension is calculated. Until then, anyone who averaged 20 to 47 contributions annually got 98% of the maximum payment. But from 2012, that band was divided into three with decreasing payments.
Mary Walsh had to leave her job with the Department of Justice when she married aged 22 in 1972. She had a family and returned to paid work in 1995. She retired in 2015, and her pension was calculated by dividing her average pension contributions by 48 years, the number between 1967, the year she started work, and 2015. Under the old rules, she would have been €5 short of a full pension. Now she is down €35 a week. ‘As bad as the Marriage Bar was, the 2012 changes are crippling,’ she said. ‘It belittles what work I did.’
Since 1994’s Homemaker’s Scheme, younger women who stopped work can ‘disregard’ the years they have been out of paid employment when applying for a pension. However, women of Mary’s age are still left short.
Patricia Cawley started work aged 16 in 1963 and, apart from a four-year period after marriage, remained in the workforce until she retired. Ahead of her retirement she was told her pension would be €225.80. ‘I turned 65 in March 2012, and in September the changes came in,’ Patricia said. ‘I was told then my pension would be €196 instead.’ She said: ‘They said it was done to make the system fairer, but it doesn’t seem fair to me.’
Justin Moran of Age Action said there is a stark difference between the numbers of men and women affected. He said: ‘If the Government came out and said they were taking €3 from every pension, people would be on the street.’
The National Women’s Council of Ireland, the ICA and Age Action recently launched a campaign to target these inequalities. Orla
‘It belittles what work I did’ ‘It doesn’t seem fair to me’
O’Connor of NWCI said: ‘It is critical that the Homemaker’s Scheme be applied retrospectively, to provide women with a decent income in their older years.’
The ‘Take Action for a Fair State Pension’ petition is at ageaction.ie.
By last night, the Department for Social Protection had not responded to a request for comment.