DAA meets over pension offer

A SPECIAL subcommittee of the Dublin Airport Authority’s board held an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss the fallout from their €55 million offer to unions on Monday to help plug the deficit in its pension scheme.

It is understood that the three-person subcommittee, established to deal with the thorny pensions issue, is led by DAA chairman Pádraig Ó’Ríordáin.

The other members are non-executive directors Gerry Walsh, a former chief executive of Bord Gáis, and Niall Greene, an experienced aviation executive.

The DAA declined to comment on the committee’s deliberations.

The Irish Times yesterday revealed that the DAA had made an offer on Monday to its unions of €55 million to help plug a deficit of €748 million in the Irish Airlines Superannuation Scheme (IASS), which it operates jointly with Aer Lingus and SR Technics.

The DAA had previously offered €32 million to unions.

This could secure pension payments for DAA workers of 78 per cent of their final salary.

The DAA has 1,900 active and 910 deferred members of the IASS.

The assumptions underpinning the proposal include a 3.25 per cent annual average salary increase at the DAA and a 2.25 per cent annual average rise in the State pension.

It also includes a 6 per cent annual rate of return on investments.

Separately, Siptu official Dermot O’Loughlin yesterday accused Aer Lingus’s management team of “extreme intransigence” in relation to finding a solution to the pensions deficit.

Mr O’Loughlin warned that Siptu’s members could be “provoked” into a “robust consideration of reactivating more adversarial industrial relations processes” if Aer Lingus did not agree a proposal shortly.

In a response, Michael Grealy, Aer Lingus’s human resources chief, rejected Siptu’s suggestion that it was not fully engaging in the talks under way at the Labour Relations Commission.

Mr Grealy said Lingus was “fully committed” to finding a “solution to the funding issues”.