Priests and Pensions…difficulties?
Below is an email from a journalist working on a story about how some ‘former’ priests have difficulty accessing pensions… If anyone is affected by this please feel free to contact the journalist directly. Details below.
I am a reporter with the Irish Daily Mail and I was recently contacted by a former priest who explained an administrative problem that had led to him not receiving a pension for over a decade of work in the priesthood.
1974 saw the introduction of a social welfare bill that allowed for ‘ministers of religion’ to contribute to the state pension and to receive it. The issue was raised in relation to Church of Ireland clergymen due to (the) fact that they generally have families to support in their old age, however because of the Constitution prohibiting any religious group receiving preferential treatment or exclusion, a workaround had to be adopted in order to allow ‘any class of ministers of religion engaged on pastoral duties in respect of whom the appropriate church authority makes representations’ for.
To make a long story short, this former priest was unhappy that Catholic priests could have joined the pension scheme in 1974 if the church authorities had allowed this but it wasn’t until the state intervened in 1988 that priests were brought into the scheme. This man, who left the priesthood after 14 years of service, is upset that he and other priests were excluded by the church hierarchy from the pension.
I was wondering if any members of the Association had previous experience with this unfortunate loophole and could shed some light on whether this is all correct and how the smaller pension has impacted them if they were priests during this era of the 1970s and 1980s?
Thank you.
Jamie McCarron
News Reporter
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Email: jamie.mccarron@dmgmedia.ie
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