The State has secured a Supreme Court appeal against a judge’s ruling that it breached the Constitution when it refused a spouse’s pension to a man who had lived with his late partner for almost 25 years.
In seeking the appeal, the Minister for Public Expenditure argued the case could have a significant impact on private contractual arrangements and for the capacity of employers to plan for employee benefits.
A panel of three Supreme Court judges agreed with the Minister that the case initiated by Freddie Jones raised issues of general public importance. It met the high threshold for allowing it to bypass the intermediary Court of Appeal, going straight to the Supreme Court from the High Court.
A date for the appeal has not yet been set.
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Jones and his partner James Kingston had been living together for almost 25 years when Kingston died in 2022.
In the High Court, Jones claimed he was discriminated against by the State’s refusal to allow him to benefit from Kingston’s contributions to a Civil Service pension scheme.
The Minister had denied him a spouse’s pension under the Civil Service Spouses’ and Children’s Contributory Pension Scheme as he was not married or in a civil partnership with Kingston.
The High Court’s Judge Cian Ferriter ruled the State’s refusal to provide him, as a qualified cohabitant of his late partner, with a spouse’s pension was incompatible with the Constitution.
He held that it was “not rational to differentiate or discriminate” between a surviving spouse/ civil partner and a surviving cohabitant. The scheme’s objective, he said, was to provide financial support to a contributor’s surviving partner that the contributor would have provided if alive.
For this purpose there is “no difference” in the social function between a surviving spouse/ civil partner and a surviving cohabitant, he said.
As part of its application for an appeal, the State contended the judges should consider the extent to which a 2024 Supreme Court ruling on access to the widower’s contributory pension, which is a social welfare scheme, affects a range of occupational pension schemes.
The court found the exclusion of John O’Meara, an unmarried father of three, from this widower’s pension was unconstitutional. The Co Tipperary agricultural contractor had been in a relationship with Michelle Batey, the mother of his children, for almost 20 years.
The couple had not married largely because of Batey’s experience of her parents’ marriage and separation. After she became ill with breast cancer, they decided they would marry but were unable to when she fell into a coma after contracting Covid-19. She died in 2021.
Part of the court’s consideration in this case was that O’Meara, as a bereaved, unmarried parent, would have the same obligations to their children as a bereaved married parent.
Following the ruling, the Government introduced the Bereaved Partner’s (Contributory) Pension, extending the widow’s, widower’s and surviving civil partner’s contributory pension to “qualified cohabitants”.
A person is a qualified cohabitant for this context if they have been in a relationship with their partner for five years or for two years if they have children together.
