Mr. Pat Hynes:

Regarding Deputy Brophy's point about when my superannuation contributions were refunded to me, I must emphasise that, to the best of my knowledge and speaking in a personal capacity as a former member, there was no covering letter and no explanation of possible future pension entitlements. Absolutely none. The Deputy made a good point. The money was refunded and - I am repeating myself - there was no letter stating that this would be the position in the future. The first time that we became aware of our current predicament was, as Mr. Shanley said, when we commenced inquiries with the Department of Justice and Equality as regards our pension entitlements and Garda service. To our dismay, when we received the reply from the Department, it stated that we were not entitled to Garda pensions, the reason being that we had left the force before 1 October 1976.

We made further inquiries by way of correspondence with the Department. What emerged were the agreed reports Nos. 218, 530 and 543. We wondered what these agreed reports were all about. We probed the matter, made further inquiries and made a discovery. We were approaching 60 years of age. The first agreed report was made in 1978 between the then Department of Justice and the Department of Finance. The next report - No. 530 - was agreed in 1997 and No. 545 was agreed in 1999.

Under the agreed reports, our Garda representative body - it was not ours, as we had left the force by then - entered into negotiations and reached an agreement without our knowledge - that must be said, as it is important - to the effect that, because we had left for various reasons before 1 October 1976, we had no pension entitlements.

A number of legal opinions were sought as regards the legality of the agreements between the Department of Justice and the Garda representative body and the general opinion of the legal profession was that we had been done a wrong and had a justified grievance. They understood that because of the remove in time we were out of time for a High Court challenge. As has been said in the presentation, had we known when those negotiations were being engaged in between the Garda representative body and the Departments of Justice and Finance, we would have gone to the table straight away and argued our case, but we did not know. Ten to 15 years had lapsed and that put us in another difficulty. We were too late to mount a legal challenge.

We are here today after all the letters, the representations and the parliamentary questions over the years. I have to say we got great support from Members of the Oireachtas over the years. We have put our case before the committee. We are convinced of our right to get our pensions. I have no pension. I am just managing like every other individual. We have made our case. It is valid. It is just. The legal opinion is that with the lapse of time, only the Oireachtas can rectify the wrong against our property rights, which are constitutional rights. This is a wonderful day for us in the sense that we are here putting our case before the committee. We will leave it with the members. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.