A failure to honour pension commitments given to thousands of State employees when they transferred to the newly-established An Post more than 40 years ago is “an unfairness that needs to be addressed”, the chair of an Oireachtas committee has said.
Labour TD Alan Kelly , of the Joint Oireachtas Committee for Communications, addressed officials from the company and Government. He said staff had been promised that an existing arrangement – under which their pensions would be increased in line with pay – would remain after the transfer. However, “somewhere along the line, that just got lost and as a consequence, a significant number of people are at a loss”, he said on Wednesday. Kelly added: “Any right-minded people would say that is unfair and it is an unfairness that needs to be addressed."
Representatives of the company’s pensioners, about 4,500 of whom were part of the transfer, said many elderly members were suffering “real hardship”. This, they said, was despite the chair of the company’s board previously telling the committee the scheme was in “rude health”. Some, they suggested, were receiving less than the State old-age pension, which they are not entitled to.
Paul Moreland of Post Office Pensioners United, said the pensioners were “at a loss” as to how the guarantees they had been given by politicians at the time, and by their then employer, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, had been ignored. He said “elderly people” were now struggling, with annual increases capped at 2 per cent since a post-crash crisis in the fund’s resourcing as pensions were left “way behind” current pay. The fund was, at one point, €500 million in the red, but now has a surplus of over €300 million.
