Aer Lingus trustees must get notice of move to pay shareholders €500m

The High Court has ruled that the trustees of Aer Lingus workers’ pensions funds must be given prior notice of a proposed €500m distribution from Aer Lingus’s capital reserves so as to pay dividends to shareholders.

It is then open to the trustees to bring a claim against the company given the €930m deficit in the funds and to seek injunctions restraining distribution of the €500m if that brings the reserves below the amount of the claim, Mr Justice Roderick Murphy directed.

He said Aer Lingus was not entitled to an unconditional order concerning the proposed €500m distribution but the trustees’ application for any distribution to be conditional on retaining sufficient reserves to address a claim also “poses a problem”.