Retired workers from An Post and Eir are to protest at the Dáil at lunchtime on Tuesday as they seek to have increases to their pensions agreed last year approved by the Government.
About 20,000 pensioners are affected, including 7,000 from An Post who are waiting on a 7 per cent increase agreed announced last September. The uplift had been agreed by the company’s board, the scheme’s trustees and the Communications Workers Union (CWU).
Of the increase, the majority was to be backdated to January 1st with the remainder backdated to June 1st but nothing can be paid until the increases are approved by Ministers at both the Department of Communications and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
On Monday, the union was told that Minister for State for Communications Charlie McConalogue had approved the increase but the union said it still needed Jack Chambers to sign off on the proposal.
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Those affected are generally not eligible for the State pension. The union put the pension of a mail delivery worker with 40 years’ service and a driving allowance at about €360 a week.
Increases to the pensions of retired An Post staff have been capped at 2 per cent in recent years despite the higher rates of inflation with an earlier link to current employees’ pay having been severed more than a decade ago due to funding issues.
The 7 per cent agreed last year, which is a one-off break with the cap on increases, was in part intended as a recognition of the ground they have lost.
The Eir retirees, meanwhile, are waiting on a smaller increase of 2.1 per cent.
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The CWU describes the requirement that Ministers sign off on pension increases despite them having been agreed by all of the parities directly involved as “archaic” and have previously highlighted the repeated delays in implementation it can give rise to.
“The requirement for ministerial approval needs to be looked at,” said the union’s general secretary, Seán McDonagh.
“The pension schemes at both An Post and Eir are subject to very rigorous governance frameworks, and increases in pensions must be agreed by unions, trustees, actuaries and company boards. The requirement for ministerial approval is unnecessary and, at this stage, an archaic throw back to when both companies were fully within the ambit of Government departments,” McDonagh said.
Paul Moreland of the Retired Post Office Pensioners’ United, a volunteer-led group, said the delay to the 7 per cent was causing real hardship to members who had seen their cost of living increase dramatically over the past few years.
“We’re waiting for months on this increase but the cost of living isn’t waiting on us. We’ve bills to pay and things are all going up,” he said.
