There are 7 of us who are friends since schooldays , all retired from what are essentially seen as middle class jobs teachers, bankers , a bakery owner and a cafe owner.
All married with spouses retired or just about to retire from very similar type jobs.
At a recent night out we were discussing our respective financial situations and the common consensus was that each of our households , give or take , were netting an income of approximately €5,000 a month
We all were extremely grateful and realise that we are lucky in that this largesse cannot continue into the future although we should be OK .
Perhaps means testing is the way forward.
You’ve nothing to be grateful about; you are not ‘lucky’. Nobody handed this to you. I suggest you have achieved your good fortune through study, hard work, prudent money management, delayed consumption, good risk assessment, etc. In the real world, i.e. not in Ireland, this is the norm. People work hard, save and subsequently enjoy their savings. And they can pass the surplus on to their descendants (or to the cats’ and dogs’ home). Stop apologising and enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Ironically, and to bring this all back on-topic, the best insurance anyone can have against poverty in old age is to be entitled to one of the better public sector pensions.
It’s not “entitlement”. It’s part of your terms and conditions of employment. You earn it. To obtain a public sector pension first you need the relevant technical and professional qualifications and be recruited by an open recruitment process by the Public Appointments Commission or by public bodies compliant with the Commission for Public Service Employment. You just can’t waltz in because your Uncle Johnny puts in a good word for you or because you’re good at certain sports. Then you have to work there until you are 66 and pay your 6.5% of salary contribution. So if you believe a public service pension is the best insurance against poverty in old age, all you have to do is be successful in a recruitment competition; obtain a public service job and work. Then you get your career-averaged pension.
The problem with this report is it unbelievably badly structured and does not provide clear guidance for policy making, and is open to misinterpretation. It also spends 10 pages of flag-waving on headline-grabbing 'intergenerational inequality', while not highlighting evidence provided in the report on chronic poverty. For example, elsewhere the report points out that lone parents and working-age adults living in households without anyone in paid work experience both income poverty and material deprivation, and that this has been a feature of Irish society since the 1990s. This is a shocking indictment of our society. But the report in its Conclusions just refers to other research that "suggests" it's due to the increasing cost of childcare. This is just a throwaway. If childcare costs are a solution, even partial, to longstanding experience of poverty, it really should be dealt with in greater detail, to demonstrate it is a viable solution.
Amazingly, the report doesn’t mention disability as a risk factor for poverty, despite clear evidence in the UK that children of families with a disabled person have a higher risk of poverty than children of families of without a disable person. And minorities, who, in other countries, are more likely to live in poverty that natives, get a one word mention in the section on Intergenerational inequality, which has nothing to do with minorities.
So, overall, a nice try, but needs significant improvement.