IF you’re under 40, look away now. You don’t want to know about how they are mortgaging your future. You don’t want to know how you will be expected to pay through the nose so your elders will enjoy a relatively long retirement. You don’t want to know how you will one day look back in anger at weeks such as this.

On Wednesday, Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys announced PRSI increases to provide extra monies to the social insurance fund, out of which state pensions are paid. The money is required for, among other things, the continuance of a system in which qualification for the pension kicks in at 66 years of age.

The PRSI hikes are spread over five years and amount in total to 0.55% of wages and salaries. From next October, the average worker will be paying an extra €46, with further rises in subsequent years.

On a superficial basis, this makes sense. The population is aging. People are also, thankfully, living longer in relatively good health. In the early 1970s when the pension age of 65 was introduced life expectancy was around 72. Today it is over 83 years and rising.

In 2020, the number of people aged over 65, compared to those aged 15-64, was 22%, or roughly one in five. In 2050, this is projected to rise to 47%. Think about that. Nearly half of people over 15 years of age will be retirees in just over 25 years time. Somebody will have to pay for pensions for this huge cohort. 

If you’re under 40 and still with us, leave now as this is where you may begin to see red.

One obvious policy tool would be to increase the age at which the pension kicks in. With everybody living longer in better health, 65 is not what it used to be. As a result, the government increased the age of eligibility for the pension to 66 back in 2014. 

Being a Fine Gael-led government it did the job in a cack-handed way. Those who hit 65 were expected to sign on for Job Seeker’s Allowance until their pension kicked in at 66, a process that took little account of the dignity of many people who had spent a life in work.

The system became an issue in the 2020 election when a pensioner, who rightly felt his dignity had been assailed, rang Liveline. Sinn Féin made hay on it, promising not just to change it but to reverse the pension age to 65, as if the party had the capacity to turn back the clock. 

Before long Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil fell into line. Plans that had been in place for years to raise the qualification age to 68 by 2028 were shelved. As with water charges a few years previously, a fair and reasonable public policy had to be jettisoned because of appalling political handling.

The current government appointed a Pensions Commission to come up with a new plan. The commission recommended gradually increasing the pension age to 67 in 2031 and 68 in 2039. No way, said the government. Sinn Féin would have them for breakfast if they ever suggested that—even years from now—the qualification age had to increase.

Despite the-head-in-the-sand approach, the smart money says that those heading for retirement in 2039 haven’t a hope of getting to draw the pension by 68, but today’s politicians will be long gone by then and most people have short memories. 

So the solution, for the moment, and until after at least the next two general elections, is to just pretend that we can continue as is by simply hiking up PRSI. Except the hikes as proposed by the Government are nowhere near what is required.

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council examined the issue earlier this year and its then-chair Sebastian Barnes pointed to a system like that which pertains in Canada where they are attempting to ensure fairness through the generations.

“The government should be required to set out how it will fund the pension system 50 to 75 years ahead, what pensions would be, the retirement age, and the required PRSI rates,” he said.

He forecast that PRSI rates would have to increase by around 6% over the next 25 years, costing the average worker an extra €1,800. In order to share the intergenerational burden, he said, this would mean an increase of 3% over the next few years, six times what the government proposed this week.

“Irish baby boomers would contribute more to the system, reducing the extra burden on younger generations,” he said. Quite obviously, the Government has no intention of doing that.

Sinn Féin, for their part, are even more contemptuous of the younger generations. Their policy is to reduce the age of qualification to 65 and somehow fund it all by increasing PRSI on employers and those earning over €100,000 to pay for it all. 

They don’t say it, but one has to assume they are also factoring in the prospect of finding a large deposit of oil or gas off the West Coast in the next decade or so.

On Wednesday, in the Dáil, Sinn Féin's finance spokesperson said retiring at 65 was “a right”. Pearse Doherty didn’t say how this right was conferred or whether it was an inalienable right that would apply to those under 40 today.

“We are clear about delivering this important right in a way that is sustainable and gives workers certainty and security,” he said. At the last election, his leader Mary Lou McDonald summed up Sinn Féin’s approach to this matter. “The demographics will take care of themselves,” she said.

In the Dáil, Leo Varadkar was hardly facing up to the future either. “We took a decision we would not raise the pension age beyond 66,” he said. “Other countries are doing that, reflecting the fact demographics are changing but we have decided not to raise the pension age to 67 and that comes with a cost.” 

He might have explained why this country is not doing as others are, what exactly the real cost is and who will be bearing it.

If those of you under 40 have hung in to this point, sorry for your troubles. That is just the way of the world right now. You don’t matter on this issue because pensions are not yet at the forefront of your mind. They will be one day, but it will probably be too late to do anything about that when the time comes around. 

For now, your future, your prospects of a decent retirement, your projected obligations to support retirees, are all just superfluous to the promises that will be scattered at the next election.