Apart from the fact that the economically active portion of the population needs to grow substantially, as the Finance Minister stresses, our compatriots need to understand that to have Scandinavian or French type pensions, one needs to contribute substantially more NI payments.

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

Scandinavian countries have well-funded pension systems managed by investment bodies independent of government – pension pots belong to contributors and not to governments.

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 Malta’s post-colonial history is the deduction of Second Pillar (service/occupational) and Third Pillar (private) pensions from the First Pillar (NI) pension, which has hit particularly hard those workers who 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 they morally justify such a move before they resolve the problem of Third Pillar pension deduction from First Pillar pension of the current generation?