Vol. 530 No. 3
237 Mr. P. Carey asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if he will renew the application for a full pension in respect of a person (details supplied) in Dublin 5; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3578/01]
Public service pension arrangements are set and approved by the Department of Finance which has confirmed that the pension payment award in this case is correct. For the information of the Deputy, I would like to add some supplementary information.
Technical and professional civil servants may be entitled to an award of notional service – otherwise referred to as ad hoc or professional added years – for pension purposes if the minimum qualifications and-or experience required for appointment to the post are such that it would not have been possible for a person who met the minimum requirements, if appointed, to earn entitlement to a full pension by maximum retiring age. The number of professional added years awarded, up to a maximum of ten years where such an entitlement exists, depends on the minimum requirements for the job specified in the competition from which the particular officer was appointed. An award is not based on the qualifications and experience of an individual appointee.
In this case the officer, who was 35 years of age when he was appointed to a position in the prisons service, does not have an entitlement to an award of professional added years because the regulations for the competition from which he was appointed specified that candidates had to be between the ages of 21 and 40. This condition meant that the youngest a candidate could have been was 21 and such a person, if appointed, would have been able to secure full pension by maximum retirement age. As a result, no award of added years can be made to any person appointed from that competition.
