{"id":246978,"date":"2026-01-16T00:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/246978\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T00:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:27:12","slug":"housing-and-media-ministers-yet-to-enter-plan-to-repay-incorrect-pension-deductions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/246978\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing and media ministers yet to enter plan to repay incorrect pension deductions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Housing minister James Browne and media minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan are the only two of 10 cabinet members who have yet to enter a payment plan to repay incorrect pension deductions.<\/p>\n

While several ministers and their advisers did not respond to queries, 18 confirmed that they had either paid back money to the exchequer or have entered a payment plan.<\/p>\n

Enterprise minister Peter Burke told the D\u00e1il on Thursday that anyone who refused to pay the money back will not receive their pension.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Mr Burke said his case had been “resolved” and this had “absolutely” happened before January 6.<\/p>\n

It was confirmed in June that some ministers must pay the State back up to \u20ac30,000 following administrative errors at the National Shared Services Office (NSSO) that resulted in the incorrect deduction of pension contributions for members of the current Government, some members of previous governments, and several office holders.<\/p>\n

\"HousingHousing minister James Browne has yet to repay the money or enter a payment plan.<\/p>\n

At the finance committee on Wednesday, public expenditure minister Jack Chambers said that 32 current ministers owed money to the State.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said 10 had yet to start paying back the money or enter a payment plan.<\/p>\n

Of 15 Cabinet ministers, 13 responded by Thursday evening to questions from the Irish Examiner.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Mr Browne said he is \u201cin an ongoing engagement and seeking clarifications with the NSSO at present”.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Mr O\u2019Donovan confirmed \u201che is engaging with NSSO regarding this matter with a view to finalising it\u201d.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Miche\u00e1l Martin said the \u201cTaoiseach engaged and sorted any issues with the NSSO a number of months ago\u201d.<\/p>\n

T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris’s spokesman said he has \u201cno issues\u201d with the NSSO.<\/p>\n

\"MediaMedia minister Patrick O’Donovan has also not entered a payment plan.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for higher education minister James Lawless said he had \u201cpaid in full\u201d, while spokespeople for Dara Calleary, Jack Chambers, and Hildegarde Naughton confirmed they had entered payment plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Darragh O’Brien has also entered a payment plan after an initial queries and a miscalculation.<\/p>\n

Additionally, it was confirmed that neither Jennifer Carroll MacNeill nor Martin Heydon are among the ministers yet to enter into agreements.<\/p>\n

Several junior ministers have also either already paid the money back or entered into payment agreements, including independent ministers Noel Grealish and Marian Harkin, Fianna F\u00e1il’s Charlie McConalogue and Timmy Dooley, and Colm Brophy, Neale Richmond, Frank Feighan, and Alan Dillon and Kieran O’Donnell of Fine Gael.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Fianna F\u00e1il junior minister Thomas Byrne said that there was \u201cno outstanding issue”, while a spokesman for Fine Gael’s Emer Higgins said she was \u201cnot among the 10\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fianna F\u00e1il’s Robert Troy also said he is \u201cnot one of the 10\u201d.<\/p>\n

Another nine ministers said they did not owe money. This included justice minister Jim O’Callaghan and children’s minister Norma Foley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Junior ministers Jerry Buttimer, Niall Collins, Niamh Smyth, Christopher O’Sullivan, Michael Moynihan, Sean Canney, Jennifer Murnane O’Connor, and John Cummins were also unaffected.<\/p>\n

Responses were not received from Peter Burke, Patrick O’Donovan, Mary Butler, Kieran O’Donnell, or Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran.<\/p>\n

Michael Healy-Rae told the Irish Examiner that \u201ctax was a private issue\u201d but that he had a tax clearance certificate, and he does \u201ceverything properly and above board\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Housing minister James Browne and media minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan are the only two of 10 cabinet members who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,1558,174,175],"class_list":{"0":"post-246978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-pensions","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}