Yesterday I visited St Dominic’s College as part of the Oireachtas outreach programme. I met a CSP class to answer their questions about life in the Oireachtas. It was a great discussion with a whole variety of questions raised by the students. Questions ranged from puppy breeding, to my typical day to how long I spent in the constituency.
The most interesting discussion focused in on pension reform. Many of the students were horrified that they would need to work for longer, up to the age of 68. I suppose when you are only 13 or 14 working until you are nearly 70 just sounds terrible.
We got into a really interesting discussion on this. I pointed out that if a change like this didn’t happen then a lot of their taxes would go towards my pension as opposed to paying for schools for their kids. Did they want to pay to look after me in my old age or their kids?
Many of them were not convinced by this argument. It just shows how important trust is in politics. If government should be about balancing the want for happiness today versus the needs of tomorrow how can this be done without trust and support for the people making these choices?