Vol. 541 No. 2
asked the Minister for
Finance the number of women employed in the public service who lost pension rights as a result of the application of the marriage bar in the public service; and his estimate of the cost to the Exchequer of granting pro-rata pension rights to this group on the basis of their employment record. [21780/01]
The Civil Service is the area for which I have direct responsibility. The position there is that, prior to 31 July 1973, the law required that female employees had to resign on marriage. In such cases, employees under pension age who had given at least five years service, six years prior to 1968, qualified for marriage gratuities of 1/12th of salary per year of service, subject to a maximum of one year's salary.
While the information requested by the Deputy in respect of the number of women who had to resign on marriage is not available, I can say that, in the period 1962 to 1973, some 1,240 marriage gratuities were paid to civil servants. On the basis of a sample of 30 of these cases, the direct cost of providing pensions for these 1,240 former officers would be about £2.5 million or 3.2 million a year; there would also be once-off lump sum payments of about £5 million or 6.4 million. This would be a minimum cost as pensions and lump sums would also be payable in respect of women who resigned from the Civil Service on marriage before 1962. Furthermore, any decision to provide pensions for officials who resigned on marriage before 1973 would have wide ramifications in relation to employees who left the public service before the introduction of preserved pension entitlements in the 1970s.
