Professor John Doyle:

That is even less likely. To be fair to the officials in the two states, when people who have worked in both Ireland and the UK receive their pensions, it is a really seamless procedure. The officials in the two jurisdictions send you documentation outlining your best outcome based on your movements and ask whether you agree. From the retiree's point of view, it is a really efficient system. In the event of what the Deputy is referring to regarding the IIEA report, it would mean either that English expatriates in the south of Spain would lose their pension, which seems highly unlikely, or, even more extraordinary, that somebody who moved from Newry to Dundalk in retirement would continue to receive their pension while a retired army officer living in, say, Lisburn would lose his or her pension. The latter seems even less likely than the scenario with the expatriates. It is not a simple matter of saying that, because you have left the UK, you are not getting a penny. How do you actually untangle things? Does it matter if you worked for your life in England rather than Northern Ireland? Would you keep your pension or lose it? Does the system even hold the information? If you worked for a multinational company or large UK company and moved around England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, could the authorities even tell where you worked? It seems to be very unlikely.