The High Court has ruled that a teacher was wrongfully removed from the 2009 pension scheme after a 57-week period in which he carried out supervision and substitution duties at Wesley College without pay.
In a judgment delivered on 18 December 2019, Mr Justice Meenan held that Enda O’Rourke had not ceased to serve at the school during that period. He concluded that he was wrongfully moved to the less advantageous Single Pension Scheme, introduced under the Public Service Pensions (Single Scheme and Other Provisions) Act 2012.
Mr O’Rourke had worked as a technical subjects teacher at Wesley College in Ballinteer, Dublin, since autumn 2007. He was paid directly by the school until September 2016, and had been a member of the Secondary, Community and Comprehensive School Teachers Pension Scheme 2009. From October 2013 to November 2014, he continued supervision and substitution duties but received no payment for them, following changes under the Haddington Road Agreement.
The Department of Education and Skills said he recommenced work as a substitute teacher on 17 November 2014 after a 57-week break in service. It relied on the 2012 Act, which generally places a public servant returning to pensionable service after a break of 26 weeks or more in the Single Pension Scheme.
The judge said the case turned on the meaning of “ceases to serve in a public service body”. The department’s interpretation, that the teacher had to cease serving specifically as a pensionable public servant, would add words to the legislation, he found. The court accepted that Wesley College was a public service body and noted that the teacher’s service during the unpaid period was not disputed. A 2016 letter approving incremental credit also recorded his service from September 2007 to August 2016.
The department separately argued that the judicial review was out of time because the teacher’s September 2016 payslip showed a pension deduction attributed to the Single Pension Scheme. The judge found the three-month period began instead when the department’s letter of 15 May 2017 made clear that he had been enrolled in the new scheme. As the application was made in July 2017, it was in time.
The judgment concludes that the teacher is entitled to the reliefs sought. The court did not specify or make the relief orders in this judgment; it said it would hear counsel on them.