Ms Eileen Sweeney:

I thank everybody for the invitation to come here today to give them a view of our lived experienced of being excluded from the industrial relations process that reduced our pensions occupational defined benefit pension in payment income by up to approximately 22.3%.

RASA pensioners worked in Dublin Airport Authority, DAA, and Aer Lingus and are members of the DAA-Aer Lingus multi-employer cross-border defined benefit occupational pension scheme. While changes to this pension scheme have to be approved Government in advance and the employers, up to 2013 they had a ballot of all the pension scheme members.

In effect, employers have a veto and, if wound up with a surplus, this goes back to the employer. For up to 45 years, employees paid a percentage of their pay during their working life as a contribution to their multi-employer defined benefit cross-border occupational pension scheme and towards their pension income in retirement. This salary-based percentage rate of contribution increased through that period to maintain and protect this accrued post-retirement defined benefit. This pension and payment from this occupations pension scheme are deferred wages and the amount of benefit is established and fixed at date of retirement and paid for the life during the post-retirement decumulation phase.

However, at the end of January 2015, eight years ago this week, Irish pensioner members, not UK and European pensionable service, with an average age then of 72 years and now of 80 years, were individually advised by letter that their current pension and payment income established at the date of retirement was being unilaterally reduced without a ballot or mitigation from the beginning of the month by up to 20%. This reduction to their income followed on from an industrial relations process and negotiations that were ongoing for more than four years. Pensions were not allowed to be at the IR table where these negotiations took place. Pensioners' former employers and trade unions, along with trustees and the State, supported by significant legal actuarial teams, engaged in an extensive co-ordinated industrial relations negotiation process to bring in changes that reduced the accrued occupational pension scheme monthly pension and payment of pensioners.

The outcome of these IR negotiations resulted in employers and trustees submitting a funding proposal to the Pensions Authority that reduced our pensions and payment. This shows an ongoing relationship of retired members with their employer that is longer than six months. The RASA made numerous requests to all parties included in this process but all those requests were refused. We had no seat at the table. We were invited to make a submission and presentation to the expert panel - which was, after all, the negotiations - and we did so and it was complimented. A few weeks later, however, we were called back and told we were not stakeholders, so our submissions could not be considered. The Bill matters to every one of us and we would-----