No political party is willing to take a 'grown-up view' on State pension funding issues, Shane Coleman has said.

PRSI hikes will have to be considered to prop up the State pension, according to a briefing document sent to new Social Protection Minister Dara Calleary.

Department officials have highlighted the need to address the sustainability of the pension system as a top priority.

They said it was already being addressed by measures which included a gradual high comprised contribution rates for workers, employers and the self-employed worth 0.7 percentage points over five years.

The document said a road map for PRSI changes was the primary revenue raising measure to address shortfalls in social insurance income in the coming years as an alternative to increasing the State pension age.

Hands of an elderly pensioner holding leather wallet with euro currency money.

Newstalk Breakfast presenter Shane Coleman said this was “another example” of “student union politics”.

“We had a General Election in 2020, this became a huge issue,” he said.

“Sinn Féin made a hames out of it and now no party wants to have a grown-up view on this - it is student union politics.

"We feel we can continue, if people live into their 90s, to allow people to retire at 65 and pay them one of the biggest pensions that’s paid in Europe.

“It makes absolutely no sense.”

'Girl maths'

Fellow presenter Ciara Kelly said it was “like ostrich politics”.

“It reminds me of, you may have seen that stuff on TikTok, ‘girl maths’, that’s what our Government is involved in,” she said.

“Which is where, I only have such an amount of money and I have rent to pay and I’ve all these things to do, but I’m still going to go out and have cocktails and get my nails done – that's what this is.

“We are fiddling while Rome burns.”

Burning money, twenty and fifty euro banknotes with flames flying. Maren Winter / Alamy. 2 January 2023

Currently in Ireland there are five workers to every pensioner. As the population ages, this is expected to decrease to two workers per single pensioner.

“Now, I know we all say, ‘But I paid into my pension’ - yeah, but that money is long gone,” Ciara said.

“That money is over and spent, it was spent on the pensioners at the time when you paid it in; it wasn’t put away for you lads, this didn’t happen.

“[The pension] comes from current spending and the current spending is not sustainable now.”

To maintain the current ratio of pensioners to workers, we would need a working population of 7.2 million by 2055.

It is predicted that the working population at that time will be four million less than that.

Main image: Shane Coleman in the Newstalk studio (L) and a person counting money (R).