Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 5 Jul 2001

Vol. 540 No. 3

Written Answers. - Pension Provisions.

Noel Ahern

Question:

127 Mr. N. Ahern asked the Minister for Finance if he will clarify the situation in relation to the Government's policy regarding comparability for retired public servants; if comparability as announced by the Government a few years ago has been fully granted; if this is accepted by the Retired Civil and Public Servants' Associations; the items in dispute; if retired staff across the public service are getting the benefits of all standard pay increases, special increases including productivity agreements and regradings where positions have been regraded and can be directly liked to positions held by retired members; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20743/01]

Minister for Finance (Mr. McCreevy)

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, the only change being that there would be a guaranteed minimum increase of 3% – or 2% in the case of any pensioners who had already received an advance payment of 1%.

Following the Government decision in November 1997, my Department issued comprehensive guidelines for dealing with cases. Some organisations had difficulties in interpreting how these guidelines applied to certain groups of pensioners. These issues were subsequently resolved and my Department, along with other Departments, made every effort to ensure that public sector bodies implemented fully the terms of the Government decision.

There were, however, problems due to the fact that some pensioner groups objected to the terms of the guidelines. Those guidelines were framed with full regard to the way that parity had traditionally been applied even before the PCW deals were negotiated and, as such, they excluded pensioners from benefiting from payments such as new allowances, existing non-pensionable allowances being made pensionable for the first time, long service increments which were personal to certain serving groups of employees, post upgradings etc. Despite this, some pensioner groups sought to have the benefit of such payments applied to them. It would, of course, have been a breach of parity to do this.

In 2000, it was agreed with the trades unions concerned that the personal long-service increments paid under the various PCW restructuring pay deals would be made permanent for serving staff with effect from 1 April 2000; accordingly, these long service increments are being passed on to the relevant pensioners in the normal way provided that they have the required service on the maximum of the relevant scales.

The benefit of all relevant pay increases since November 1997 under Partnership 2000 and the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness have been passed on to pensioners.