Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

To accommodate the Deputy, I will address this matter. An issue arose in this regard which I should explain. There seems to be a view circulating that the provisions of section 16 were not brought to the attention of the House. First, the published explanatory memorandum to the Bill clearly sets out the background to the proposals put forward in section 16. Second, when I made my Second Stage speech to the House on 2 October, I drew the attention of Members to the section's provisions when I stated:

Section 16 makes amendments to the provisions dealing with ministerial pensions, as follows. First, former office holders — Ministers and Ministers of State — on leaving service are entitled to receive severance for up to two years. Circumstances can arise where, through oversight or otherwise, a former officer holder does not apply for the pension within the specified time period, namely, within six months of severance payments ending. The amendment would give the Minister for Finance the discretion to backdate the payment of pension in the case of an application made outside the six-month limit to the date of entitlement and reflects a similar provision which applies to Civil Service pensions.

This is an important point. As Minister responsible for the public service, I had to consider how all public servants are dealt with in this situation. My view was that in a situation where there was a provision that one had to apply within six months, if there was an oversight, that person would be dealt with differently than everyone else in the public service. As Minister responsible for the public service, in considering this situation and taking all of the arguments on board, I felt, while it is never a popular thing to do, it was the right thing to do. It was not right that a person would, because he was a politician and not in another profession in the public service, be denied from the date of entitlement his pension as a result of a provision which was specific, as I understood it, to the particular regulation that deals with pensions for Ministers. I dealt with the matter on that basis and felt it was the right thing to do.

In my Second Stage speech, I also stated:

Second, whereas the current ministerial pensions scheme allows for a pension to be payable after two years service as a Minister, the "old" pre-1993 scheme requires three years service. This amendment would provide for payment of a ministerial pension to a member of the "old" pre-1993 scheme who has more than two years service as a Minister. This has been the position for members of the "new" scheme since 2001.

The amendment, which has been subject to media comment in recent days, compares in no way to the case of a garda who was dismissed from the Garda Síochána in 1973. It was not my intention to raise this matter but it has entered the public domain. The case in question involves a different issue, namely, preservation of pension entitlements. At the time the garda in question was dismissed from the Garda Síochána in 1973, forfeiture of superannuation benefits applied in the case of dismissals and preservation did not become a feature of the Garda Síochána superannuation scheme until September 1976. Therefore, under the terms of the Garda Síochána scheme, he did not, unfortunately, have any superannuation entitlements. The two cases are separate.

As I did on Second Stage, I draw attention to the part of section 16 which amends the provisions of a new ministerial pension scheme introduced in 1993 under which serving Members had the option to remain in the old pension scheme or accept the terms and conditions of the new scheme. Under the new scheme, the qualifying period for a ministerial pension has been two years since 2001. When this matter was raised with my predecessor in 2001, he indicated he would amend the legislation governing the old scheme to bring it into line with the new scheme. The official advice to me was that such a change was warranted and could be accommodated in the Bill transposing the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive into Irish law. The amendment ensures both ministerial pension schemes have the same qualifying period, as was originally intended. Beneficiaries will also apply.

See this speech in context