Budget 2017, a pensioner's story: ‘We’re far worse off than 8 years ago’

“I’m from a generation that know how to cut their cloth to suit to their measure — that spent their lives having to live within their means.”

Wed, 12 Oct, 2016 - 01:00

Claire O'Sullivan

So said Ellen Reddin from Ballymun in Dublin, emphasising her age: “76-and-a-half-year-old.”

Yes, she’s somewhat pleased to see a €5 increase in the old- age pension from next March, but the mother-of-six and grandmother-of-18 will be watching to see what other ‘secret cuts’ lie in store in the year ahead.

“You have to keep your eye on the ball. They’re making a song and a dance about giving us a fiver from next March but between 2009 and next March, even with the €3 increase last year and €5 in March, our pension and benefits package will still be €1 less than what they were in 2009, and our bills have all risen since then.

“So, eight years on, we’re far worse off than what we were with prescription charges, property charges, and bin charges to pay now.”

There was other good news for older people in yesterday’s budget: The most Ellen, and other person in their 70s, will have to spend on prescription charges in any month will fall to €20 in March. At the moment, it is capped at €25.

“Yesterday’s changes won’t make a huge difference as I rarely spend €20 a month on tablets. I do have typical old people problems like angina and arthritis which means these days I’m paying every time I renew my prescriptions because of the prescription charge.

“Thank God, I’m healthy though, so I’m only at the doctor once a year for a MOT.”

She remembers, with laughter, Fianna Fáil’s Celtic Tiger promises to increase the old-age pension to €300.

“The pension is a survivors’ allowance, that’s what I call it. I’m surviving on it. But as I said I’m from a generation that know how to cut their cloth,” she said.

“I’ve never been to Tenerife or Lanzarote, put it that way”.

Ellen lives in a local authority house so her rent is “manageable”. She would have liked some kind of telephone allowance re-introduced.

She uses a mobile and broadband like most pensioners, she said, so “some help with those rising bills” would have been good.

Age Action, of which she is an active member, asked for the telephone allowance to be re-introduced over two budgets in its pre-budget submission.

Ellen would also have liked to see the double week Christmas pension payment restored fully. She has a lot of presents to buy every year for her large family.

Former minister for social protection, Joan Burton returned 75% of it when she was in power, and Leo Varadkar and Michael Noonan went a step further in this budget with 85% of the payment to be paid this year as a bonus payment.

Ellen said she feels she is “doing alright really”. It’s her kids she feels sorry for.

“They all work and they all have their own families, but they’re being screwed by taxes like the Universal Social Charge, property taxes, and water charges, which I hear will come back.”

She’s happy about there being an increase in the number of gardaí being trained at Templemore Garda College.

“But it will be three more years before we see them, if I do. We need the Irish equivalent of the bobby on the beat now, not in three years.”