Widow in Dáil query gets pension back

A 76-year-old woman who had the suspension of her widower’s contributory pension raised in the Dáil has had it reinstated.

Annie Howell from Ballyfermot in Dublin was unable to draw her pension when she went to collect it last Friday having refused to take part in a random survey of 1,000 pension recipients, the purpose of which is to examine fraud and error in welfare schemes.

Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday, Ms Howell said she had refused to participate in the survey because she felt it was "prying into my business".

“When my husband was alive he gave 17 years of stamps and I gave my own stamps,” the mother of nine, who worked as a part-time cleaner after her husband died in 1977, said.

She described having her pension suspended as “degrading”: “They’re bullying ordinary people and [asking about] their money as if you’re defrauding them,” she said.

Pension cut-off
Ms Howell said she was contacted by the Department of Social Protection in September but informed them she would not participate in the survey.

She received correspondence on January 9th which said her pension would be cut off as a result of her refusal to participate.

Her case was raised on Wednesday by People Before Profit TD Joan Collins, who contrasted Ms Howell’s case with those of people on high salaries and pensions.

“There are those on State pensions who have to prove and reprove their eligibility to their entitlements – prove they are not spongers, criminals or defrauding the State.

“This is contrasted with those at the top of our society, with an unlimited and boundless sense of entitlement, in the health services and the top of charitable organisations who have salaries of up to €100,000 a year, 10 times the State pension,” Ms Collins said.

The TD received correspondence from the Taoiseach’s office yesterday saying that, the Department of Social Protection had reinstated the pension as of yesterday.

Asked yesterday how she had managed since her pension had been suspended, Ms Howell said, “Thank God I have a good family, they came down and did the week’s shopping . . . but they’re all paying their mortgages . . . If it went on for another week I wouldn’t be able”.

She said it was increasingly difficult to manage on the €230 she receives each week. “Bin charges, the property tax, now the water, there was the household charge . . . they took the phone off, the [€20 heat allowance] stops six weeks earlier . . . we don’t have their salaries – how are we supposed to pay all that?”