Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister's dealing with the draft national aviation policy, which is not on the agenda. I appreciate that he referred to it and is saying that where a route is in existence, that will not be open to non-EU or non-US carriers. Aer Lingus traditionally dealt with the Los Angeles route, so the Ethiopian development is worrying.

The Minister said that the appeal mechanism involved the option of the Pensions Ombudsman or the High Court and that the amendment proposed by Deputy Dessie Ellis was unnecessary. I do not accept that. The Pensions Ombudsman has told the deferred members group that it is nothing to do with that office. In the past couple of weeks, a ruling in Britain in the case of a British Airways pilot showed how difficult it is to get an adjudication on workers' interests from a pensions ombudsman. Is the Minister suggesting we will have 15,000 people taking a High Court case as a remedy to this when we could open the State's industrial relations machinery to retired workers? If we can let Kieran Mulvey adjudicate on Garth Brooks concerts, presumably pensioners and former employees should have the right to the State's labour relations mechanisms.

The approach of the Minister seems to be to shrug his shoulders at the unfortunate consequences of the mess that is the IAS scheme, as if it were something beyond anyone's control. The reason we are in this situation is down to the employers in the scheme and poor decisions made by the trustees. The Minister is preparing to give the trustees more power but we need an investigation into what went on. I do not accept the point that the pensioners are not contributing money but are just taking out less. Inevitably, that means they are leaving €110 million in the kitty, and existing pensioners, through the cuts being imposed on them, are the only group that have contributed cash to the scheme. The Minister has confirmed that the employers are keeping their money in a separate scheme to offset liabilities.

I reject the Minister's point that Aer Lingus was heavily overstaffed. Many of the functions traditionally undertaken by Aer Lingus staff were outsourced to third parties, many of which were without unions and had poor terms and conditions. This is not the way forward and has served to undermine the scheme. The freeze and de-risk strategy has undermined the asset base of the company because of the way the trustees made their decisions and there is irrefutable evidence that some of the decisions were at best questionable. There are severe connections, and if it is not the call of the Minister, the Department of Social Protection should investigate what went on.

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