Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Those three particular areas are all important and I will try to give the Deputy a general response as best I can. We were conscious of the pensions liability that was accruing. One of the first actions that we took in government was to introduce the new single public service pension Bill, which became an Act. That scheme was commenced and has been operable since 1 January 2013. Obviously, we have not had mass recruitment to the public service in that time, but those who were recruited were so under the scheme's terms, be they judges, local authority workers, teachers or anyone else. As it will be a career average pension as opposed to an end-of-career pension determination, we estimate that it will save us from 32% to 35% on the pension bill by the middle part of this century. Taking this measure early was a significant achievement. It will take the pressure off pensions.

The Deputy asked a number of important questions about the way in which academics, for example, have migrated into the pension scheme and whether they did so on the same terms applied to existing career public servants. We have come across anomalies of people being awarded extra years previously. All of this was subject to sanction by the Minister for Education and Skills and me, which we are not doing anymore. There were situations in which people were awarded extra years in the academic institutions without any significant justification objectively. We need to do away with those situations.

The Deputy asked a specific question about whether someone's top-up would be pensionable. The answer is "No". Any unsanctioned pay is not pensionable. That is the simple approach.