Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Garda would be called. Voting twice for an absent colleague is not normal practice. I will talk about this Chamber. It is very different for one of us to come in here and sit in someone else's seat and to press the button for somebody who is here, but where somebody is not in the Chamber, those doors are locked for a reason. They are locked and the Senators inside the doors are legally entitled to vote. It is very serious in the context of how many times it has happened and whether this practice of voting has ever affected the passage of legislation.

If the Acting Chairman, Senator Wilson, will not discuss it here today, I would ask the Leader to allow time to discuss the issue of voting within the Chamber at another time. It is wrong to try and swat it away as though it is not important. I look forward to the full investigation of falsification of votes across whatever Chamber it might be. We cannot merely ignore it and carry on as if it were business as usual.

I refer to the 70,000 semi-State pensioners from Bord na Móna, ESB, RTÉ, CIÉ, Bord Gáis, Eircom, Coillte, aviation, and port and docks. These are pensioners across all the constituencies who devoted their working lives for the benefit of the State. They provided the nation's electricity, gas, peat, radio, television, telecommunications, aviation and myriad other State services that we all take for granted. They are represented by the retired semi-State staff associations, which presented in the audiovisual room this morning. I acknowledge Deputy Bríd Smith and others for gathering there but there were so few people there this morning. This is an enormously important issue, as Senators will see when there is a demonstration outside the gates here again tomorrow. It is wrong that the rights under the contract of employment of these pensioners, because they are former workers, are ignored. These pensioners have nowhere to go. They do not have any body or organisation to which to refer grievances. The 12-month time bar is a ludicrous impediment to these workers seeking justice under the equality tribunal in the same way that the industrial relations, unions and pension authorities all close the door on thousands of former workers seeking the address of their grievances.

This legislation must be changed. It is not about acquiring public money for these people. As they stated this morning, these pensioners just want their own money back, but under current legislation there is no obligation on employers to fund deficits in their pension schemes and there is no real protection for these pensioners against efforts by solvent employers to renege on their responsibility to their pension schemes and to address a fund deficit. The proposed new legislation, which was introduced in the Social Welfare, Pensions and Civil Registration Bill 2017, is an opportunity for the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, to introduce full legal protection for pensioners, and there has to be financial consequences for solvent employers who abdicate responsibility for their pension schemes and fail to make contributions to resolving pension fund deficits. The debt on the employer concept for the amount of the unresolved pension fund deficit is urgently required and must be enshrined in pension law without further delay.Will the Leader ask the Minister to come to the House to address this issue specifically? It cannot continue. These people have had no pay increase whatever since 2008. Moreover, a 2.5% lifelong levy has been imposed on them while there have been increases in the cost of living and so on. Many must look to benevolent funds just to survive. It is wrong that we should treat former workers like that.