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Lost Pension Arrears

Date released: 15.06.1999

Ombudsman Publishes Pensions Report

The Ombudsman, Kevin Murphy, has today (15 June) published Lost Pension Arrears, a special report to the Oireachtas based on more than 200 complaints received by his Office since 1985. The pensions in question are the contributory old age and the contributory widow's pensions payable by the Department of Social, Community & Family Affairs. The complaints relate to the fact that, when eligible people are late in claiming these pensions, most of the pension arrears remain unpaid. This penalty applies despite the fact that these are contributory pensions where the entitlement is created by the pensioner (or spouse) having paid social insurance while at work. The practice of the Department has been a source of complaint for many years. In 1997 the Ombudsman published an investigation report on the matter and this resulted in an easing, but not the removal, of the penalty. Today's report is a general case study in public administration. It takes the issue of pension arrears as the particular example from which general questions are raised and analysed.

Among the questions raised are:

• why did the system allow a serious inequity to continue for so long?
• why was it that a discretionary option not to impose a penalty remained effectively secret?
• why was it that the penalty system was effectively devised, not by the Oireachtas, but by the Department?
• what does this case study tell us about the capacity of the Oireachtas to oversee the making of regulations?

The Ombudsman concludes that the pensioners who lost out were not in a position to organise themselves, either to take legal action or for political lobbying, and this is one of the reasons why their case remained unaddressed for so long. The Department did have special rules under which arrears could be paid in some cases but these rules were never publicised and, not surprisingly, were rarely used. The Ombudsman concludes that it is fundamentally wrong, and potentially a misuse of powers, to have special rules known only to, and only capable of being invoked by, the administrators.

The Ombudsman points out that the penalty rules, under which pension arrears remained unpaid, were effectively made by the Department rather than by the Oireachtas, as one would expect. The Ombudsman suggests that the penalty rules were invalid as the Department would not have had authority to impose such serious penalties itself. The lesson which the Ombudsman draws from this is that the Dáil and Seanad need to find an effective mechanism to supervise and monitor regulations which are made under delegated authority from the Houses of the Oireachtas.

A summary of the report is attached. The full report is available on request and the text is also available at (http://www.irlgov.ie/ombudsman/) on the Ombudsman's website.

For further information please contact Fintan Butler at 01- 6785222 or 01- 6395620 (direct)

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