THE GOVERNMENT has said it envisages no difficulty in withdrawing pension payments from former ministers who are still TDs and Senators.
The Department of Finance confirmed yesterday that the Attorney General Paul Gallagher had raised a number of legal issues about the Budget-day measure to withdraw the ministerial pensions.
However, the department said the Cabinet reached a conclusion that there were ways around the legal obstacles and the decision could be proceeded with last week.
Mr Gallagher is understood to have advised the Government that the plan might not be capable of being enforced legally if any of the TDs affected by the measure challenged it.
However, the Government proceeded on the basis that none of the 26 TDs and two Senators entitled to the ministerial pension would object.
The politician who stands to lose most under the amendment is former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who is a TD in Dublin Central and is liable to lose pension payments of some €112,000.
The Department of Finance said yesterday that the measure was unlikely to be included in the Finance Act as it did not deal with taxation but was most likely to be the subject of a special resolution.
However, there are indications that all affected TDs and Senators will be asked to voluntarily forego ministerial pensions.
That would allow the Government time to introduce legislation giving effect to the decision at a later stage and would overcome any legal difficulties that would arise.
“The best way of doing it would be for people to do it voluntarily so there will not be a need for legislation,” said a Government source yesterday.
A number of former ministers have already foregone the pensions, including the Fianna Fáil TD for Longford-Westmeath Mary O’Rourke.
Contacted yesterday, Mrs O’Rourke said that she had decided this year not to receive it any more and had contacted the relevant person in the department. She said she then wrote to the Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to inform him of her move.
“I did not trumpet it. I was becoming very uncomfortable about it all,” she said.
In her letter to Mr Lenihan, she said she asked was it possible to divert the money to the “Sapling” school in Mullingar, one of 12 special schools throughout the State geared towards autism.