Vol. 503 No. 6
150 Mrs. Owen asked the Minister for Finance the number of pensioners who retired before 1 June 1996 who have had parity restored in their pensions under PCW; the number of pensioners who have been denied full restoration of pension parity in spite of a commitment given by the Government; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10973/99]
154 Ms O. Mitchell asked the Minister for Finance if his attention has been drawn to the fact that up to one third of public service pensioners have not, as promised, had parity of pensions which were removed under the PCW restored; and the action, if any, he will take action to rectify this matter. [11004/99]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 150 and 154 together.
It is not correct to state that some pensioners have been denied full restoration of pension parity.
The position is that, in June 1997, in An Action Programme for the Millennium, the Government undertook to protect public service pensions. In November 1997, the Government announced that the benefit of the restructuring pay deals under the Programme for Competitiveness and Work would apply on the basis of parity to public servants who had retired before the commencement dates of those deals; however, in order to protect retired public servants who would have received less than 3 per cent had parity been applied in the normal way, the Government decided that a minimum increase of 3 per cent (or 2 per cent in the case of any pensioners who have already received an advance payment of 1 per cent) should apply.
Following the Government decision in November 1997, my Department issued comprehensive guidelines for dealing with cases. Initially, there were difficulties in interpreting how these guidelines applied to certain groups of pensioners. These issues were subsequently resolved and my Department, along with the other Departments involved, made every effort to ensure that the terms of the Government decision were fully implemented.
As the Deputy is aware, my Department is directly responsible for Civil Service pensioners. A number of these pensioners have not yet received their full entitlement under the various PCW restructuring deals. The bulk of them did, of course, receive an interim payment in 1997 or early in 1998. However, because of the nature and complexity of the various restructuring pay deals many thousands of individual pensioner files had to be examined in order to determine the individual benefits. My Department has sought the relevant service details of these pensioners from their parent Departments in order to determine their full entitlement under the relevant restructuring deals. The compilation of this information by the parent Departments is time consuming because the individual files have to be examined manually and the relevant information may not be readily available on the files. Nevertheless, I can assure the Deputy that all relevant cases will benefit from the Government decision.
