Directors jailed for not paying into pension fund

THE TWO men jailed for failing to pay staff contributions to a pension scheme sold a waste business to State-owned Bord na Móna for €4.5 million at about the same time that they halted workers’ payments to their retirement fund.

Wexford District Court this week sentenced father and son Damien Goff and Francis Goff to five months in prison after finding that their company, Goff Developments Ltd, deducted workers’ contributions to the construction employees’ pension scheme from their wages but never paid the money over to the fund.

The company failed to pay €11,781.51 to the pension scheme between November 2008 and December 2009.

Construction companies are legally obliged to deduct pension contributions from workers’ wages and remit the money to the scheme.

In late 2008, the Goffs, of Horetown, Killinick, Co Wexford, sold a waste business, Goffs Recycling, to State company Bord na Móna for €4.5 million. They were the sole shareholders in this company and thus would have benefited from the sale.

Goffs Recycling was a separate operation to their construction business. The pension regulations only cover construction workers and would not have applied to the waste company’s staff, either before or after it was transferred to Bord na Móna.

The directors and the company were fined €4,000 each and had €3,200 in legal costs awarded against them.

According to the Pensions Board, which brought the prosecution, the court found that the company committed the offences with the consent or connivance of, or attributable to, neglect on the part of the Goffs, as its directors, contrary to various provisions of the Pensions Act, 1990.

This is the first case in which company directors have been jailed for failing to comply with pensions legislation. According to construction industry sources, a number of similar prosecutions are due before the courts.

Pensions Board chief executive Brendan Kennedy said that the sentence should act as a warning to all employers and company directors that the board treats the failure of any business to remit employees’ retirement contributions to scheme trustees as a very serious offence.

The Pensions Board is a statutory body established to regulate occupational pension schemes. It can prosecute minor offences in the district courts and refer serious breaches of the law to the Director of Public Prosecutions.