Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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492. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if her attention has been drawn to the ongoing statutory non-compliance across the ETB sector in respect of the issuing of annual pension statements to employees (details supplied); and the steps which will be taken to ensure that this is rectified with immediate effect. [25649/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Public Service Pensions (Single Scheme and other Provisions) Act 2012 provides for the issuing of annual benefit statements to members.

My officials have been liaising with their counterparts in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to clarify various pension issues peculiar to the work patterns in the education sector which impact on the provision of annual benefit statements. This work is ongoing.

Each Education and Training Board (ETB) is a separate statutory body that is responsible for managing its own affairs, which would include meeting its statutory obligations in respect of the issuing of annual pension statements to employees. The legislative base and accountability framework for ETBs is set out in the Education and Training Boards Act 2013.

In recent years my Department has provided additional financial resources to ETBs to put in place appropriate structures to progress matters in a number of areas including pension statements. I have been advised that a number of ETBs issued Annual Benefit Statements to a number of staff members in 2019 and all ETBs are committed to issuing further Annual Benefits Statements to staff members in 2020.

Each ETB has faced challenges in developing their payroll systems to produce Annual Benefit Statements for their members. Five ETBs have migrated their payroll functions to the shared payroll services for ETBs with a further two planned to move by year end. All remaining ETBs will migrate to shared payroll in the coming years and following that transition staff will be able to generate their own online benefit statements. My officials are committing to supporting ETBs in this work.