Joining Shane Coleman in studio for the last Sunday Paper Review of the year were the Irish Examiner's Mick Clifford; Sinead Ryan, consumer columnist with Independent Newspapers; and director of communications with GOAL and former Labour strategist David Leach.

The review kicked off with a discussion of the reports today that the Tánaiste is planning to increase the old age pension by €25 over five years, if Labour is returned to government. 

David observed that "I think it's a play for the grey vote - and if you were to examine the polling you would see that people of that demographic vote more than any other.

"Enda Kenny with promises of tax decreases, and Joan Burton with promises of pension increases or greater spending... risk the economic competence card being taken away from them if they play that hand too much.

"But at the same time they have to show a bit of leg to the voters and say what they'll do if they're elected," he added.

Sinead - who was appointed to the Pensions Council earlier this year - suggested "it is unaffordable at the moment... in truth Joan Burton nor anyone else can promise anything like this increase without being able to show where the money will come from".

Meanwhile the Sunday Independent reports that 'gas guzzlers' are the biggest threat to Ireland's CO2 status.

Mick argued "what came out of Paris [climate summit] is that we're going to have severe changes if we're going to make any proper effort to meet the targets. And a quite obvious one would be to tax the living daylights out of gas guzzlers.

"You have to discourage that sort of thing if you're going to have any chance of meeting your greenhouse targets," he added.

You can listen back to the full Paper Review below: