Ministers should face court over pension botches, urges Ombudsman

Government ministers may have to be prosecuted over the dismal running of pension schemes for public workers, an official watchdog warned today.

Pensions Ombudsman Paul Kenny said the health service in particular continues to draw significant complaints about its management of employees’ retirement plans.

The investigator, appointed by the Government to probe pensions disputes, insisted legal action against ministers may be necessary to “concentrate minds”.

“Some superannuation sections are not well resourced, which results in the neglect of the internal customer – very often, front-line staff with patients to look after and no time to follow up on their pension problems,” he said.

“They deserve better.”

Mr Kenny said there were a number of cases last year of excessive delays in resolving rows about pension entitlements in the public sector.

There are concerns that the delays may result in employees being unfairly out of money.

Although there had been an overall improvement on the year before, the health service continued to be a huge area of difficulty with significant numbers of complaints, he said.

He has compiled a list of cases, as part of his annual report, presented to the Social and Family Affairs Minister Martin Cullen.

The Pensions Ombudsman also highlighted the “depressing number of complaints” about construction bosses either not registering or not paying workers’ pensions contributions.

He said there were still cases of “theft” by employers of contributions deducted from wages but never paid into the Construction Workers’ Pension scheme.

Mr Kenny said he had been able to recover money for a significant number of workers who had been treated disgracefully by employers, but in some cases he couldn’t because the firm had gone out of business.

There were 439 investigations launched last year by the Ombudsman’s office into complaints about retirement savings schemes, up from 389 on the previous year.

More than half (52%) of complaints made last year were upheld compared to less than a third (32%) the year before, according to the annual report.

Mr Kenny stressed that, overall, pension schemes were operating well with most workers getting back what they are due and on time.