Having listened to the last exchange I should inform the Minister that I have written to his Minister of State proposing an alternative to make flats the subject of a signable leasehold so that people could at least keep them in the family while paying the rent for them. I attended a public meeting in my own constituency where everybody thought that was a just approach because they appreciated some of the problems the Minister has raised.
The matter I wish to raise is the issue of the computation of pensions of retiring members of the Defence Forces. I have been written to by a number of retired personnel who have indicated that there is unfair discrimination between those who retired before and after August 1990. If you retired prior to that date your military service allowance is not reckoned as part of your income for the purpose of determining your pension, whereas if you retire after that date it is.
As I understand it the Gleeson Commission, which examined the question of remuneration in the Defence Forces, said that in their view such military service allowance should be reckonable in respect of pension entitlements and should be implemented immediately with retrospective effect, regardless of whether the person retired before or after August 1990. I understand — and I do not criticise them — the Permanent Defence Force Other Ranks Association negotiated hard with the Department of Defence for the implementation of the Gleeson report but settled for the 1990 cut off point.
I ask the Minister to inform the House of the number of people affected by the 1990 cut off point and the cost to the Exchequer of implementing the Gleeson recommendation in full so that we know the financial implications of taking military service allowance into the reckoning for deciding the pension entitlements of those who retired prior to August 1990. Based on the letters I have received, there is a manifest feeling of injustice that people who retired from the same job on different dates are paid pension on a wholly different basis. Those who retired prior to August 1990 are not entitled to have their military service allowance taken into account in computing their pensions. Those people who are receiving less than those who retired months later, although they effectively completed the same service, have a genuine grievance.
Anybody looking at the justice of the case would appreciate it is not contrived. It is not like the labourers in the vineyard. Everybody worked for the State as a member of the Defence Forces on equal terms and everyone received the military service allowance but some people are being told it does not count for the purpose of computing their pensions. It is very difficult for a person who retired over four years ago to see a colleague, who survived him in military service by a matter of months receive a larger pension on the basis of an arbitrary cut off point which would not have been set if the Gleeson Commission's report had been implemented.
