Tag Archives: Pension

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The Irish Mail on Sunday at the weekend

You may recall a post from yesterday about Fine Gael’s Brian Walsh.

It explained that, if the former TD’s application for early retirement – on grounds of ill health – was granted, he could start to receive his pension now, instead of waiting until he is 66.

This is despite Mr Walsh, who didn’t contest the general election, previously promising that he wouldn’t draw down the pension before he reached 66.

Well.

The Irish Mail on Sunday reported at the weekend that Mr Walsh has already been granted permission.

John Lee and Valerie Hanley reported:

The Oireachtas this week refused to say if the early retirement on grounds of ill health pension had been granted. But a source this weekend confirmed that it had.

Ordinarily, the former TD would be entitled to a pension at 66 years of age, calculated on the basis of his service. As he has served five years, this would amount to around €900 a month.

Under the early retirement scheme, as well as getting his pension 23 years early, he has been credited with ‘notional service’. This is based on the assumption that, but for his retirement due to illness, he would have won at least one more election. As a result, he will receive 10 years’ service – that’s around €1,800 month. Over 23 years this amounts to a pension fund worth about €500,000.

There you go now.

Previously: The 43-Year-Old Pensioner

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Former Galway Fine Gael TD Brian Walsh

Via The Sunday Times Ireland:

While [Fine Gael TD] Brian Walsh, 43, announced he would not be standing for re-election in his Galway seat last November, he told a local radio station that he would “most certainly” see out his term until election day.

Walsh resigned his seat on January 14, three weeks before President Michael D Higgins dissolved the Dail and the election was called.

On November 11, Walsh told the Keith Finnegan Show on Galway Bay FM he would not be getting a “gravy train” payout, or any pension until he was 66. The TD promised he would “most certainly” fulfil his mandate “right up until election date”.

However, on December 16, Walsh wrote to the Oireachtas to apply for “early retirement on grounds of ill health”. {Walsh said he had been admitted to hospital in 2013 “with acute diverticulitis” and spent nine days under a consultant’s care]

If his application is granted he can get his pension now instead of waiting 23 years until he is 66.

The decision will be made by Labour’s Brendan Howlin, the ceann comhairle Seán Barrett and the Seanad cathaoirleach Paddy Burke, who are trustees of the Oireachtas pension scheme.

They could grant Walsh a notional extra five years’ service if they assume he would have been re-elected were it not for his illness.

The total benefit before retirement age could be worth almost €500,000 over 23 years.

Good times.

Walsh vowed to forgo TD pension (Mark Tighe, Sunday Times)

Rollingnews

Former AIB chief Eugene Sheehy last night bowed to pressure and agreed to a pension reduction after Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the lender’s former managers had a “moral responsibility” to reduce their retirement payments over the failure of the bank.
Mr Sheehy will take a cut in his annual pension to €250,000 from between €300,000 and €325,000, he said in a statement released to The Irish Times.

“I fully appreciate the ongoing difficulties facing the bank and the economy, and this is a personal decision on my part,” said the former chief, who left the bank in 2009 after it was bailed out by the State.

The Government has since pumped nearly €21 billion into AIB and almost fully nationalised it to cover losses due to the property crash.

Bless.

He’ll live with it, somehow.

Former AIB chief agrees to reduced pension of €250,000 (Simon Carswell, Irish Times)

(Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland)

THE GAP between the State’s future pension and social welfare liabilities and revenues to fund them stands at €324 billion, according to an unpublished report commissioned by the Government, which has been seen by The Irish Times. That figure is almost twice the size of the national debt as it currently stands.

The review of the Social Insurance Fund – the pot into which about €8 billion in pay-related social insurance contributions (PRSI) go to fund a range of benefits – was commissioned by the Department of Social Protection. Last year the fund’s annual shortfall stood at €1.5 billion, or 1.1 per cent of gross national product.

The bank bailout is a mere blip, people.

State will face €324bn shortfall over pensions (Dan O’Brien, Irish Times)

(Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

Social Welfare Minister Joan Burton is keeping her right to a public-sector pension from her previous job as a college lecturer.

Ms Burton has 20 years’ service in DIT and resigned from her position as a senior lecturer in accounting last year — after nearly a decade on leave of absence — just days before she was appointed to the Cabinet.

The minister was on leave of absence from 2002 to 2011 and from 1992 to 1997 while she served as a TD.

Nice work if you can get it.

Burton Clings On To Pension From Her Lecturing Job (Fionnan Sheahan and Katherine Donnelly, Irish Independent)

(Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland)