Vol. 574 No. 3
118 Mr. Neville asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the reason farm retirement pension for a person (details supplied) in County Limerick has been reduced, despite the fact that there has been no change in their circumstances. [26909/03]
The reduction in the early retirement pension being paid to the person named is because she has reached the age of 66. It is a condition of the EU regulation governing the scheme that the early retirement pension must be reduced by the amount of any national retirement pension paid to the retired farmer. The person named has a non-contributory widow's pension. When she reached the age of 66 on 29 September 2003, she had the choice under the social welfare system of keeping the widow's pension or transferring to the non-contributory old age pension. She opted to continue with the widow's pension.
For the purposes of the early retirement scheme, the widow's pension is not regarded as a national retirement pension while the recipient is under the age of 66. Once the person named reached that age, however, my Department was obliged to treat her widow's pension as a national retirement pension and offset it against her early retirement pension. The same would have happened if she had opted for the non-contributory old age pension.
