George Lawlor (Wexford, Labour)

I want to raise the issue of pension abatement. Quite a number of retired public servants who were encouraged back into the service following their retirement are now in receipt of rather large pension abatement bills, so to speak. Retired public servants who had already earned their pensions were basically told that if they worked a certain number of hours, cumulative over the full year, they would not be penalised in any way. However, one man showed me a bill for €18,000 and said that a colleague of his had a bill for in excess of €40,000. These are people who were encouraged back into the service and, to be fair to them, came back into the service at a time when we were really under pressure, which is often still the case. The irony of it is that, if he went to work for an agency supplying work to the public service, there would be no implication for his pension. This is on foot of Circular 24/2022 from the Department of public expenditure. I urge the Tánaiste to intervene with the Department of public expenditure to realistically look at this and to ensure that people who have come back in to give their service to the State again are not penalised.

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