How long do I have?

Sentiment score: 0.00

I thank Minister, Deputy Calleary, for taking this Topical Issue debate today. As he knows, my party leader and I have written to him a number of times over recent months. I have received his correspondence and responses, which I know have been drafted by officials in his Department who have been responding to this issue for some time. The issue here is that many former Waterford Crystal workers who paid into their pension schemes and were left down initially by the company, but also by the State, have received compensation. They received compensation because a small group of workers took a High Court case which eventually went to the European Court of Justice. Because of that, a compensation scheme was put in place to deal with those workers who were in a deferred pension scheme. Those workers had to fight the State every inch of the way and, in fairness to them, they did and they got the best outcome. There is a category of workers who have been left outside of that. These are workers who, at the time of their redundancy, were not given their full statement of options. They were only given the option of a refund of their contributions. They were not given the option of a preserved benefit and they were not given the option of staying within the pension scheme. Because of that, they are now locked out of the same compensation that other categories of workers have been given. The Minister's response and the response of the Department seems to be that the State did no wrong and that it was not the State's fault, even if it is the case that the workers were not given their full entitlements. By the way, it has never been accepted by the State that it was at fault, regardless of whether the workers were given their full options. What the Minister seems to be saying in the response that has been given to me is that, notwithstanding that the legal situation at the time, the workers may have had a right to know all of their options, but not in writing, and they would have had to ask as opposed to being told. That is unacceptable because the whole thrust of the compensation scheme that was put in place was on the back of an EU directive that the State failed to implement to protect people in these circumstances. These workers have been failed and let down. They want a meeting with the Minister to raise important questions they have. The right thing for the Minister to do is to meet with them.

Sentiment score: 0.02

It is not a case of whether the workers were the victims of an injustice; in my view, they were. As I said earlier, at the time those workers should have been given three options: the preserved benefits option, a transfer value or a refund. They were only given one option, which was the refund. The quarrel seems to relate to the fact that the Minister and the Department are of the view that this was a matter for the company and the trustees of the pension fund as opposed to the State and, therefore, the State does not have a liability. However, the Minister confirmed in his response that the Hogan case "related to the failure of the State to adequately transpose into Irish law the relevant provisions of the European Union’s insolvency directive". He went on to say: ... a mediated settlement was reached between the parties to that legal action. The mediated settlement applied to all persons who were members of the Waterford Crystal staff and factory pension schemes on the date of wind-up of the schemes. That is true. The problem, however, is that these workers were not given the option to be members of that scheme. The only option they had, as part of their redundancy, was a refund. That is an injustice. It is wrong that the Minister will not meet those workers because they want to better understand the advice of the Attorney General and determine whether he had all the information when he made his judgment. It is incumbent upon the Minister to meet the group and talk to it about the advice he received from the Attorney General.

Sentiment score: -0.03