Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Question 479: To ask the Minister for Finance his plans to change the guidelines for certain widows of employees of the Office of Public Works who did not join the special pension rights scheme in 1979; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24482/05]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The Commission on Public Service Pensions gave careful consideration to the arguments for and against providing another option to join spouses' and children's pension schemes. In the event the commission decided not to recommend a further general membership option across the public service as a whole. In this regard the commission was particularly concerned about the major additional costs such an option would impose, given that it would in all probability be availed of by those who would either have an immediate entitlement or a high expectation of benefit at a later stage. The commission was also concerned that a further option would weaken the integrity of the schemes leading to pressure from individuals to enter and leave at will. Such a development could undermine fundamentally the financing of such schemes.

The commission recommended the establishment of a limited appeals process to examine individual cases and to allow appeals which meet any of the following criteria: where there is no evidence that an option was provided to the individual public servant in the first place; where there is medical evidence to indicate that the person making the decision not to join the scheme was of sufficiently unsound mind not to appreciate the consequences of his or her decision; or where a member of the original scheme declined to join the revised scheme in circumstances where there would have been no reasonably foreseeable adverse financial consequences for the individual, in terms only of his or her scheme contributions, had he or she instead opted to join the revised scheme.

The Government gave its approval to the general thrust of the commission's recommendations in September 2001 and an appeal process on the lines of the above is available. Any person who wishes to appeal on any of the above grounds can do so by contacting their personnel section or, where appropriate, the personnel section of their deceased spouse.

On a more general note, the commission recommended a number of reforms related to the future development of public service spouses' and children's pension schemes including a proposal to allow payment of a survivor's pension to a financially dependent partner in circumstances where there is no legal spouse and where a valid nomination has been made. A joint management-union working group chaired by my Department has been formed to examine the feasibility of these recommendations.