David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is the correspondence we received from Mr. O'Sullivan. I have met some of the workers and unions involved on this outside of my work on this committee. I am sure other members have as well. This is something the unions raised with me. The Pensions Authority was informed on 4 September 2009 that the scheme was no longer in compliance with the statutory funding standard as set out in Part 5 of the Pensions Act.

In the wake of the financial crisis the authority adopted a general policy of allowing schemes extra time to enter into a funding proposal, which they were required to do. Has the Pensions Authority the right to override what is a statutory instrument? That is what seems to have happened here. A separate briefing document, prepared for CIÉ and released under an FOI request, was given to the secretariat. It is not in the pack for this week. I think it was sent yesterday. It refers to CIÉ pensions and superannuation schemes. One paragraph refers to the board's responsibilities as set out in the statutory base rules. It goes on to say that independent legal advice would suggest it would be difficult for the board to ignore the advice recommended by the authority, unless there was some compelling reason to believe that the authority's recommendation was flawed. There is no reason to believe the data on which the valuation is based is incorrect.

I have two questions. Does the authority have the right to override what is a statutory instrument? The second and bigger issue is one the unions are asking us to try to establish. Is there a policy in CIÉ to engage in deliberately underfunding the defined pension scheme in an effort to make it insolvent at some point? There are serious questions that need to be answered.