The High Court has dismissed Boliden Tara Mines Limited’s claims over a pension plan amendment, leaving in place a provision removing the State pension deduction for members whose benefits were calculated by reference to a date on or after 20 February 1998. The court held that the provision included members receiving benefits under the company’s Income Continuance Plan (ICP) on that date.
The dispute concerned the definition of “pensionable salary” in a 1999 deed amending the Tara Mines Pension Plan. Before the amendment, pensionable salary could be reduced by an amount linked to the State retirement pension, a practice known as integration. The company argued that the change removing integration was meant to apply only to members in active employment, excluding ICP beneficiaries.
Justice Finlay Geoghegan rejected that interpretation. The deed’s wording did not exclude ICP beneficiaries, although another provision in the same deed expressly excluded them from a separate bridging pension benefit. The judge said the difference in wording meant the court could not read an exclusion into the integration amendment.
The company also sought rectification of the deed to insert an express exclusion for people receiving ICP benefits on 20 February 1998. The judge dismissed that claim, finding no cogent evidence that the company had intended such an exclusion when it made and executed the amendment. The joint proposals that preceded the deed referred to eliminating integration and improving pensions for all plan members; the evidence did not establish a clear intention to exclude ICP beneficiaries.
The judge also found no sufficient evidence that Irish Pensions Trust, then the scheme trustee, had decided to consent to a different amendment that excluded those beneficiaries. Although an ICP administrator said he understood the changes to apply only to active employees, the court found no evidence that this understanding was communicated to those who authorised or executed the deed.
Alternative claims to set aside the amendment for mistake or declare it void under the rule in Hastings-Bass were also dismissed. The court found no evidence that the company executed the deed under a mistake about its effect, and no evidence establishing that the trustee would have acted differently if it had considered the funding implications on the information then available. The judgment dismissed all of the company’s claims; it did not make a separate order calculating any individual member’s pension.