Sir, - On September 26th the Minister for Defence, Mr Michael Smith, unveiled a memorial in Lebanon to 45 Irish soldiers who died in the cause of peace since 1978. The Minister said they had made the supreme sacrifice in the service of peace.
On Sunday, November 25th, the nation witnessed a magnificent military parade as the Defence Forces celebrated 23 years of honourable peacekeeping service in the Lebanon.
Bringing up the rear of the parade was a large contingent of UN veterans led by Maj-Gen Vincent Savino and Lt-Col Danny Flood. This contingent included men who had served in the Irish battalions in the Congo, Cyprus and Lebanon spanning over 40 years of military service. All are now retired on pension.
But only those who retired since August 1st, 1990 are paid military service allowance in their pensions by the Department of Defence, despite the strong recommendations of the Gleeson Commission on the Army which was adopted by the Government in August 1990.
The Gleeson Commission said military service allowance was an integral part of military pay and accordingly recommended that the pensions schemes be amended to provide for the reckoning of military service in calculating benefits. Yet in April 1991 the Department of Defence introduced the cut-off date of August 1st, 1990 and deprived about 5,600 pensioners of military service allowance.
The Minister for Defence, in answer to Dβil questions in 1995 by Ms Mary Harney and Mr Noel Ahern, who were then in Opposition, said the cost of paying military service allowance to 5,600 pensioners would be £4 million a year before deduction of tax - hardly a big sum with a budget surplus close to £1 billion.
In answer to Dβil questions by William Penrose, Jack Wall and Frances Fitzgerald, the Minister for Defence, Michael Smith, has cited the cost factor as a reason for not paying military service allowance. Whatever happened to the Celtic Tiger? Are pensioners who retired before August 1st, 1990 the forgotten men?
Military service allowance is worth £1,150 a year before tax to a pensioner from private to colonel. There are now over 1,500 widows who are not receiving military service allowance in their pensions. Some are now on very small pensions and in their seventies. Their husbands made the supreme sacrifice on UN duty.
Memorials, medals and parades are a very fitting recognition of UN service, but surely the State has a much greater obligation to its pensioners: to accept the recommendation of the Gleeson Commission. - Yours, etc.,
James Fagan, (Col., Retd), Ballymore, Co Westmeath.