Madam, - Once again in your Editorial (November 26th) you address the issue of public service pensions without acknowledging that over 300,000 serving and almost 100,00 retired public servants did not get any increase whatsoever under their new pay review mechanism, namely benchmarking mark two, last January.
This was, as outlined in the benchmarking report, because "a discount of up to 12 per cent was applied for pension entitlements".
In effect, public servants are paying up to 12 per cent more for their pension in addition to what they had already been paying. The director of Tasc, Paula Clancy (October 21st), made some interesting observations with regard to the funding and cost of pensions. She correctly pointed out that private pensions are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer through tax reliefs. Indeed, the cost to the State of tax forgone in this subsidy is greater than the cost of the State pensions bill. Tasc is correct in stating that the nub of the matter is not any disparity between private and public sector costs and benefits but how as a society we should organise future pension provision. - Yours, etc,
BERNADINE O'SULLIVAN,
Fortfield Road,
Terenure,
Dublin 6w.