Apart from the fact that the economically active portion of the population needs to grow substantially, our compatriots must understand that to have Scandinavian or French type pensions one needs to make substantially more NI contributions.

Public servants in France pay well over 20 per cent of all salary in pensions and health and the State forks out around another 10 per cent.

Scandinavian countries have well-funded pension systems managed by investment bodies that are independent of the government.

The Malta Pensions Working Group has repeatedly recommended that NI contributions should be ring-fenced and managed solely as a pension fund and not shared with ‘free’ health. There is no way our meagre level of NI contributions can provide good pensions and universal ‘free’ health.

That ‘free’ health should be funded from NI contributions (originally intended solely for pensions and work-related benefits) was never actually enacted into Maltese social security law is, of course, another story often conveniently forgotten by politicians.

The gravest unresolved pension injustice in this country’s post-colonial history is the deduction of Second Pillar (service/occupational) and Third Pillar (private) pensions from the First Pillar (NI) pension.

This deduction has hit particularly hard those workers who have changed employment or took out a separate private pension. Some of these unfortunate individuals have been rendered among the poorest of our pensioners.

When the previous Administration floated the idea of new mandatory Second Pillar pensions, the Pensions Working Group wondered how this could be introduced without first resolving the 30-year-old iniquity of deducting Second from First Pillar pensions.

The present Administration wishes to go ahead with fiscal encouragement of Third Pillar pensions for future generations. How can it morally justify this before it resolves the problem of Third Pillar pension deduction from First Pillar pension of the current generation?