Age Action has warned that the State Pension is a vital buffer to protect pensioners form poverty and that any tampering with it in this year’s Budget would cause increased hardship for some older people.

“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,” Age Action spokesman Eamon Timmins said. “This is a fact which is often ignored by economic commentators when they call for the State Pension to be cut.”

The older people’s charity was responding to comments by Professor John FitzGerald of the ESRI’s comments at the McGill Summer School today when he said 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% in 2001 to 10% in 2009, Age Action noted. “Although the fact that one-in-ten 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,” Mr Timmins said. “We cannot now start dismantling that success and plunging older people back into poverty.”

Many older people live on incomes which leave them hovering around the poverty line. Research by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice found that a woman aged over 70 and living alone faces a shortfall of between €12 and €67 a week between what it would cost to live a sustainable lifestyle and what she receives in Social Welfare payments. 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 the cuts, nothing could be further from the truth,” Mr Timmins said. “From the loss of the Christmas bonus which accounts for 2% 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.”

Source: www.ageaction.ie