The Construction Industry Monitoring Agency was set up jointly by the Construction Industry Federation and the building unions to ensure building firms registered employees with the Construction Federation Operatives Pension Scheme. Each building worker is supposed to contribute 25p a week to CIMA and the employer another 25p, to finance its monitoring activities.
Nominated officers of trade unions carry out spot checks on building sites to ensure building firms are contributing to the pension fund. However, they can only investigate non-CIF firms. The CIF is responsible for policing its own members. These form about 50 per cent of companies, including most major contractors.
Each time a nominated officer finds a company outside the pension scheme the construction union group in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions invoices CIMA for £350. This amount is known colloquially in the trade as a "bounty". The money is remitted at regular intervals to the union concerned.
It is up to the union how it deals with "bounty" income. For instance all CIMA money received by the bricklayers' union, BATU, goes into central funds, while SIPTU has an elaborate system of dividing the money between head office, the local branch and the individual officer.
At present there are almost 40,000 building workers in the pension fund, paying contributions to CIMA. Premium income to the pension scheme last year was almost £18.6 million. CIMA, which is an independent organisation run jointly by the CIF and ICTU group of unions, does not publish figures. However, its income this year is expected to be around £1 million. Based on internal CIMA figures seen by The Irish Times over £200,000 a year is paid out through the "bounty" system.
The employers' contribution to the pension fund is £9.59p per week and the employees' £5.08p. The maximum pension is £2,201 a year, plus a lump sum of £2,243 for individuals on retirement.
Opponents of the scheme argue that the monitoring system is too expensive and ineffective as the majority of the State's 160,000 building workers are still outside it and the pension itself is derisory.
Defenders of CIMA argue that the number of people brought into the scheme has risen dramatically in recent years and that many building workers are in subcontracting, employed by agencies and public bodies, or otherwise ineligible for the pension scheme.