Ray Butler (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Pensions (Equal Pension Treatment in Occupational Benefit Scheme) (Amendment) Bill 2016 was introduced to the Seanad on 8 December 2016. The Labour Court found that the requirement to marry or enter into a civil partnership to obtain a benefit under a pension scheme is liable to affect significantly more LGBT employees than heterosexual employees in circumstances in which the right to marry is reversed for opposite sex couples and civil partnership is not available.

In terms of the position of the Government, the introduction first of civil partnership and then of marriage equality has made a huge difference for many of our fellow citizens. The Bill introduced by Senators Bacik, Humphreys, Nash and Ó Ríordáin seeks to deal with an important legacy issue for a number of couples. The Government is sympathetic to the Bill and has, therefore, chosen not to oppose it. The Bill, as drafted, raises serious legal and technical problems as well as a number of policy issues. These would need to be dealt with and teased out during further consideration of the Bill.

There are two conditions under the Bill that must be met for a same-sex spouse to be entitled to a spouse's pension. The conditions are that on or before the date on which the employee reached pension age, he or she could not have married the beneficiary because both parties were of the same sex, or because he or she could not have entered into a civil partnership with the beneficiary and a foreign civil partnership would not have been recognised, and after the employee reached pension age, he or she married or entered into a civil partnership with the beneficiary within 36 months of it being lawfully possible to do so, or his or her foreign civil partnership became recognised in Irish law. Apart from the same-sex couples included in those two conditions, the Bill would affect pension schemes and the scheme's stakeholders. It is possible that where pension schemes unexpectedly must pay spouses' pensions retrospectively, those schemes may seek to reduce benefits for other classes of beneficiaries. Affected pension schemes might take a legal action to challenge the Bill if it is passed. It is right that this legacy issue be dealt with but it is crucial that a Bill with adverse or unintended consequences is not put on the Statute Book without understanding and accepting those consequences. A number of issues would therefore need to be considered.