Those who make the rules benefit from them too

CARLSBERG doesn’t do pension schemes. But if it did, it would be the Irish public service pension scheme.

Not only do public servants have one of the most generous schemes in the State, it now transpires that rule changes restricting the age at which people qualify for the payment of the State pension effectively do not apply to them.

And the pity of it is that most public servants do not even realise just how lucky

they are when it comes to their retirement package entitlements.

The revelation about how public servants have wriggled out of the State pension age rule is set to come as a shock to thousands of private sector workers.

Workers in the private sector retiring at the moment are forced to wait until they are 66 before they qualify for the State contributory pension. This is despite the fact they have been paying for it for years. The rules were effectively changed mid-way through the game in 2014.

The changes to the Irish pension system mean that many victims are not just losing their salaries, they’re losing out in State supports.

Not only that, the revelation that this change in the State pension age effectively does not apply to public servants is even more galling, as it is private sector workers whose taxes subsidise gold-plated public sector pensions that are not subject to the same age rules.

When the Government raised the State pension age from 65 to 66 and abolished the transition pension, no one noticed that in effect this change did not apply to public servants.

Private sector workers forced into retirement at the age of 65, the most common age chosen by employers, often have no choice but to go on the dole for 12 months while waiting to receive their pension, if they do not have a supplementary scheme to cover them.

This is why there are more 65-year-olds on jobseekers’ benefit than at any other age.

And it means these newly-unemployed workers are getting almost €50 a week less than they would if they were entitled to a State pension, according to Age Action.

But all categories of the public service are effectively protected from the extension of the State pension age, and the averaging test for the State pension.

Public servants recruited before 1995 do not pay PRSI. Their pension is not integrated with the State pension, so they do not face having to wait until they are 66 to get their full entitlements.

Those recruited between 1995 and 2013 can get the supplementary pension, as long as they are not working, as soon as they retire.

Public servants recruited after 2013 have a guaranteed job until State pension age, so do not have to retire at 65 and claim jobseekers’ benefit until the age of 68.

And for public servants who pay PRSI, who retire before the age of 65, but have not got sufficient PRSI contributions to give them the maximum contribution pension, there is an opt-out here too.

They get a top-up to the supplementary pension to bring them up to the maximum State pension.

So they don’t have to worry about the pesky PRSI averaging system.

They are completely insulated from the financial effects of the later State pension age.

It seems to be a severe case of those who make the rules benefit from them.