Burton: We have time to deal with pension shortfall

Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton said today that the Government has time to deal with the pension issue in Ireland.

An unpublished report on the Social Insurance Fund stated that the gap between the state's future pension and social welfare liabilities, and the cash available to pay for them, could be as high as €324bn.

Minister Burton said that certain contributions may have to be earmarked to deal with the problem, and the report does allow time to do that.

"You do it by balancing the contributions and the report is talking about a timeline of 40-50 years," she said.

"But what the report also says is that we have a tremendous bonus in this country and we've time to do this because we have citizens who are very young, and we've a lot of young children being born."