The Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) is to stage a protest outside Leinster House next Tuesday over delays in the payment of pension increases for 20,000 retired workers at An Post and eir.<\/p>\n
The union has criticised what it described as an unnecessary delay by the Minister for Communications Patrick O\u2019Donovan in approving the agreed increases.<\/p>\n
The CWU said the increases have already been agreed by unions, trustees, actuaries and company boards.<\/p>\n
The union added that the delayed approval by the Government shows “an outrageous lack of respect and deepens the hardship of older people who must live on fixed incomes.”<\/p>\n
As the pensioners do not receive annual State pension increases, the CWU said they rely on these agreed adjustments to meet basic living costs.<\/p>\n
“There is no financial justification whatsoever for this delay,” said CWU General Secretary Se\u00e1n McDonagh.<\/p>\n
“The pension schemes are private, well regulated, and in strong financial health and there is no cost to the Exchequer,” Mr McDonagh said.<\/p>\n
In October 2025, An Post wrote to the Department of Communications requesting consent for an increase to pensions by 6% with effect from 1 January 2025 and 1% from 1 June 2025.<\/p>\n
“Whilst it is not possible, at this point, to set out the specific timeframe within which the decision-making process will be concluded by both shareholding Ministers in respect of increases submitted for consent, the Department is actively working to conclude the required approval process,” a spokesperson for the Department of Communications said.<\/p>\n
Last year the Department of Communications received a request for a pension increase of 2.1% for eir (formerly Telecom \u00c9ireann) pensioners with effect from 1 July 2025.<\/p>\n
“Department officials sought the advice of the New Economy and Recovery Authority (NewERA) on this pension increase proposal, which NewERA is currently reviewing,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“It should be recognised that the time taken for the pension approval process is necessary to ensure that robust governance procedures are in place,” the Department added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) is to stage a protest outside Leinster House next Tuesday over delays in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-409372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}