Complaints to pensions watchdog soar 76%

THE NUMBER of complaints received by the Pensions Ombudsman has soared by 76 per cent this year, with a significant number of cases relating to the construction sector.

Launching the ombudsman's 2008 annual report yesterday, Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin refused to rule out the possibility that a single tax relief rate of 33 per cent on pension contributions might be introduced in next week's budget.

Ms Hanafin said this measure, which was proposed in the revised programme for government, should be viewed as part of the National Pensions' Framework, which has yet to be published and is unlikely to be implemented before 2014.

However, she said tax reliefs can be changed by the Minister for Finance in any budget. "The Minister could do it next week," she said.

Pensions Ombudsman Paul Kenny said that about 15 per cent of the complaints received by his office relate to the construction sector. In some of these cases, employers deducted pension contributions from their employee's wages, but did not remit them to the pension schemes.

Apart from being "nothing short of theft", it can also mean that families of building workers who have died, sometimes in workplace accidents, find that they are not entitled to any benefits, he said. This year the flow of complaints from the construction industry has been particularly heavy as people have been losing their jobs in the sector, he noted.

While they were in employment, many workers were afraid "to put their heads above the parapet".

During 2008, the ombudsman received 758 new complaints, a 47 per cent jump on the previous year. Mr Kenny said that 40 per cent of complaints came from the public service, with the remainder coming from the private sector.

One unusual case last year related to the misappropriation of pension scheme benefits by a professional administrator.

"The misappropriation did not result in any personal financial gain to the culprit, but resulted from an attempt to cover up an earlier mistake," he said.

This is the first case of its kind to come to the ombudsman's attention, which he said suggested that governance and controls in the pensions industry were "generally good".

When asked if the offices of the Pensions Ombudsman and the Financial Services Ombudsman are to be merged, Ms Hanafin said that she had "no immediate plans" to do so, "unless the Minister for Finance has plans to do that".