The issue raised refers to the position of self-employed people who were over 56 years of age on the extension of social insurance to the self-employed in April 1988. While it is difficult to obtain accurate statistics on this group, it is estimated that there were up to 20,000 self-employed people over age 56 when PRSI was extended in 1988 and who were registered for PRSI purposes. As I indicated recently during the debate on the Social Welfare Bill, the additional cost of paying an old age contributory pension to all this group would be of the order of £50 million per annum, equivalent to a capitalised cost of £475 million over the full period of the payments. The figure of £756 million to which the Deputy referred was originally estimated to be the cost by the National Pensions Board and was based on 50,000 people qualifying for pension.
I assure the House that I will continue to ensure the broadest possible contributory pension cover to as many categories as possible. I have asked my Department to examine the general issue relating to the self-employed group aged over 56 in April 1988. The condition that a person must have entered insurance at least ten years before pension age, before he or she is eligible to qualify for the old age contributory pension, has been a feature of the scheme since it was introduced in 1961. The purpose of this condition is to ensure that entitlement to the pension is limited to those who have made a reasonable level of contributions to the social insurance fund during the course of their careers. This ten year condition was supported by the National Pensions Board and it is considered to be reasonable. The amendment in the Social Welfare Act, 1997, regarding the payment of refund of contributions to this group — which was agreed by the Deputy's party — effectively re-emphasised the position of the ten year test.
I assure the House that any self-employed person who has contributed and does not qualify for either a contributory or a non-contributory pension receives a refund of the pension element — 53 per cent — of his or her PRSI contributions with interest, which is a fair arrangement. I presume that a scheme could be devised for less than £20 million per annum depending, obviously, on the entitlement conditions applied and the level of pension paid. However, I must stress that any proposals would, as I have indicated previously, have a major cost implication and would fall to be considered in a budgetary context. I remind the Deputy that in such a context £20 million is a significant amount of money, equivalent to almost 9 per cent of the full year cost of the 1998 Social Welfare budget package. I indicated previously, and it is important to repeat that a person is entitled to a non-contributory pension, subject to a means test.
