Dinny McGinley
Question:504 Mr. McGinley asked the Minister for Finance when the increases will be paid to retired public servants as announced by him prior to the budget in December 1997. [1530/98]
Written Answers. - Public Service Pensions.
The Government decided in November that public servants who retired before the commencement dates of restructuring pay deals under the Programme for Compeitiveness and Work should benefit from those pay deals on a parity basis subject to a minimum adjustment of 3 per cent in their pensions or 2 per cent in the case of those pensioners who have already received an advance payment of 1 per cent. In implementing these increases, Departments were instructed that every effort should be made to ensure that pensioners received the arrears of payment due to them before the end of 1997.
As regards the Civil Service pensions, for which I have direct responsibility, it was not possible to pay all pensioners their arrears of pension by the end of 1997. However, most of the pensioners did receive an advance payment of 3 per cent or 2 per cent in the case of those who had already received an advance payment of 1 per cent. Pensioners who did not receive any advance payment then have received it since or will receive it in the near future.
In a number of cases, the advance payments are more beneficial than the application of parity on a traditional basis. Accordingly, such retired civil servants have received, or will shortly receive, their full entitlement under the Government decision. In the case of those pensioners who are due more than the minimum increase, work is in progress, in conjunction with the Departments from which they retired, to identify the individuals and the amounts due. Because of the complexity of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work pay deals, a considerable amount of research is required. For example, many of the pay increases in question involve the addition of one or more long service increments to the relevant pay scales: determining whether individual pensioners had sufficient service on the maximum of the relevant pay scales to benefit from these increments will take some time.