Ms Eileen Sweeney:

To answer the Deputy's question, for which I thank him, we knocked at every single door. We were told that the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman cannot deal with class actions or groups. Rather, it deals with individuals. It also tends to be after the event. The negotiations were going on intensively for approximately four and a half years. Our views were not listened to. Some people met us out of courtesy and some just picked our brains and all of our information. When the Government set up an expert panel on the issue for stakeholders to make submissions, RASA made a submission on behalf of pensioners. The panel met everybody and was very courteous but later said we were not a stakeholder and that it could not talk to us. The Pensions Authority were involved in discussions on draft proposals. There was a whole pile of draft proposals around the place. Even two weeks before the proposals signed off, we met the Pensions Authority, which said it did not yet have a funding proposal. However, there was such a proposal within a few weeks and we were told - unilaterally - that up to 20% of our pension and payment was gone. The existing structures are not there. The WRC and the Labour Court were heavily involved. We got letters from the Labour Relations Commission, LRC, to say it was not allowed to talk to us.