Dublin South West TD, Seán Crowe, has described the Government’s response to a Labour Court ruling about pension entitlements for CE supervisors as contradictory. The Sinn Féin TD said the Government supposedly support the change, but they are failing to initiate this change and are in fact blocking it.

Deputy Seán Crowe said:

“The public are rightly outraged at the unfair pension regime for certain women due to changes in eligibility criteria in 2012. This new regime is also impacting on other groups of workers facing into retirement. Community Employment Scheme Supervisors are one of these groups.

“In 2008, a landmark Labour Court ruling found that a pension scheme should be introduced for CE supervisors and it should be funded by FÁS, but subsequent Ministers, including the current Taoiseach, have ignored and failed to act on this important ruling.

“The CE functions of FÁS have transferred to the Department of Social Protection and the Ministers in that Department have also made no attempt to implement the courts findings.

“This means that there is huge uncertainty for CE supervisors and assistant supervisors as to where they officially stand, what pension entitlements they are entitled to, where they can access the pension from, and from whom. This anomaly is grossly unfair and needs to be addressed.

“When questioned by Sinn Féin back in 2011, the then Social Protection Minister, Joan Burton, said a scheme to address this would cost around €33 million in retrospective pensions owed and an additional €3 million yearly. Since then neither Deputy Burton, nor her successor Leo Varadkar, former Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, and his successor Pascal Donoghue, have made any attempt to right this wrong.

“This means that retired CE supervisors, like many other pensioners impacted by Joan Burton’s new pension regime, have been left significantly out of pocket.

“The Government are ignoring their responsibilities to these CE Supervisors and other pensioners negatively impacted by Joan Burton’s pension changes. Equally concerning is that they are also sending a worrying message to other employers that Labour Court rulings can be flagrantly ignored.

“The Government has now kicked to touch the pension issue to a ‘forum’ to ‘scope’ the issues facing the overall pension deficit and its fallout. Unfortunately they didn’t need to adopt that approach in FÁS when €48 million was spent on ‘advertising’ and when giving an outgoing Director General their €1.4 million package.

“Clearly the Government needs to adhere to its own labour relation structures by implementing the Labour Court recommendation immediately and showing these retired pensioners the respect they deserve.”

ENDS