Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There has been much talk about what the Government is going to do, which is conveniently hard to measure, and I want to speak of some things the Government has done. I want to raise the issue of a particular group of pensioners and members of a pension scheme, many of whom are in my constituency and many of whom are in the Taoiseach's constituency. A number of these people are in the Public Gallery today, having taken the day off from their work to be here.

When the Taoiseach was the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, he brought in the State Airports (Shannon Group) Act 2014. As a result of the unique powers given to the trustee by this legislation, the pension scheme of thousands of workers in Aer Lingus, the Dublin Airport Authority and the Shannon Airport Authority was changed dramatically with effect from January 2015. The accrued benefit of active and deferred members has been frozen. It will never increase in the future. Deferred members saw their entitlements plummeting, devastating the expectations of their living standards in their retirement years. I can tell the Taoiseach that these people are not celebrating the €5 pension increase yesterday.

Almost exactly one year ago to the day, when the Taoiseach was the Minister for Social Protection, I brought to his attention the situation of an associated pension scheme, the second Aer Lingus supplementary scheme, involving some of the same people. That scheme was linked to the Irish airlines (general employees) superannuation scheme, IASS, with the discretionary benefits objective to potentially provide for indexation of the IASS, which was closed at the same time. I brought it to the Minister's attention that this fund of €108 million belonging to 2,500 people was sitting there in cash while the trustees took siphons to spend hundreds of thousands of euro on professional fees. That scheme is now being wound up, the Minister is now the Taoiseach and at this stage the people involved urgently need his help.

The pension operated for eight years between 2007 and 2014. Workers paid in 2% of their salary, the company paid in 4% and €34 million was put in to kick-start it. The expectation was always that members of the fund would get back their contributions and any surplus divided on a fair basis. Instead, a method of distribution has been unilaterally decided upon by the trustee. This has caused absolute uproar. I will give some examples. A woman who is 45 years old paid in €10,500. She is being allocated €12,400. A 53 year old man paid in €14,200 and he will get €17,100. A 59 year old woman who paid in €22,800 will get €62,300. A man, who is one year older, who paid in €100 more will get back €23,700 more. This type of allocation method is completely unacceptable to members whose money has been allocated in such an unfair manner, and placed into a pension scheme over which they have been given no option.

My question to the Taoiseach is really quite simple. Will he contact the trustee and the advisers to ask them to listen to the scheme members and to have the funds of the scheme allocated in a fair manner before it is too late?

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