A former secretarial assistant to TDs has sued the State for a €26,000 "lump sum" she claims is due to her under a redundancy deal she took up in August 1997.
If Ms Maureen Morris succeeds in her action, the Department of Finance will be faced with payouts totalling hundreds of thousands to other Dáil secretarial assistants who opted for the same scheme.
Ms Morris, of Frascati Park, Blackrock, Co Dublin, told Judge Katherine Delahunt she had been employed by Fine Gael for 21 years, and had been paid by the Department of Finance under a scheme to provide secretarial assistance for TDs who were not office holders.
As a shop steward with SIPTU, she had participated in negotiations involving secretarial assistants from four other parties and the Department of Finance to agree a redundancy deal.
She told her counsel, Ms Iris White, that a package had been agreed and in 1997 at the age of 56 she had opted to accept a redundancy nett payment of €28,000. It was always her understanding that under the deal, her pension and a further lump sum would be preserved until she reached 60.
Ms Morris said that on reaching 60 in October 2001 she had received her weekly pension payments, but the Department had claimed her pension gratuity had been subsumed in the voluntary retirement lump sum she had accepted in 1997.
Ms Patricia King, a SIPTU official, told the court she had led negotiations at the time and "completely" rejected suggestions that the full pension entitlements of any participant in the redundancy scheme had been in any way diminished by the redundancy agreement.
Ms Ruth Lawlor, a secretarial assistant who had also been involved in negotiations, told the court she distinctly recalled Department of Finance assistant secretary Mr Colm Gallagher stating that anyone taking redundancy would have their pension entitlements "frozen".
Mr Michael Vallely, counsel for the Minister for Finance, said it would be the Minister's case that Ms Morris's pension entitlement to a lump sum at age 60 had been subsumed in the redundancy lump sum she had received in 1997.
The case continues today.