Greetings All! This is an update on our recent activities on your behalf!
1) AGM
The AGM was held in the Talbot Hotel Stillorgan on December 4th 2025.
We had a good turnout with well over 120 in attendance and more members joining us on Zoom. Detailed minutes are available here.
Stephanie Fitzpatrick gave her chairperson’s report on our work during the year and announced that she would be stepping down as Chair.
Tony O’Connor covered our history of integrating with similar retired staff organisations.
Joe Little , our representative to the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament, reported on the work we are involved in with them. (Both Tony O’Connor and Phil Healy complimented Joe on his presentation to members of the Oireachtas on the importance of the Brid Smith Bill and providing a voice for all pensioners).
Treasurer, Carole Corrigan brought us up to date on our current finances.
We were very lucky to be joined by Eugene Murray and Paul Doyle, the elected trustees of the RTÉSA. They spoke about the current position re increases, their role as trustees and Paul explained about what exactly ‘a buy in’ to an insurance company annuity scheme entailed.
We had a very enlightening talk and questions and answer session from Professor Rose Anne Kenny, Consultant in Geriatric Medicine. The title of her talk was: Age Proofing: The New Science of Managing Healthspan
There was an engaging question and answer session on all subjects brought up during the course of the meeting.
The committee members elected for the coming year are:
Chair: Phil Healy
Vice Chair: Stephanie Fitzpatrick
Secretary: Siobhán Carew
Treasurer: Carole Corrigan
Committee Members:
Tony O’Connor, Joe Harris, Keith Hyland (Webmaster), Joe Little, Vera Sullivan, Eamonn Galvin, Tom McSweeney, Jim Jackman (co-opted onto the committee at our meeting on February 9th 2026)
We extend our very best wishes to Máiréad De Búitléir, who retired from the committee after many years of hard work and dedication to the cause. Enjoy your retirement Máiréad!
2) RTÉ attempts raid on RTÉSA yet again!
We were made aware that RTÉ has applied to the Government to change a rule that would allow the transfer of the administration costs from RTÉ to the fund. We have fought this successfully twice before and are prepared to do so again on this occasion. NewERA, the advisors to the Government estimated that these costs could amount to over €40m over the life of the scheme. We wrote initially to the Trustees on 28th October 2025, advising them of our opposition to this move. We prepared a 7-page document setting out the reasons why we opposed the change in the rule and asking them to object to the attempt. We are happy to report the Trustees are against the change in the rule. See letter here plus 7- page document here.
At the same time, we copied this letter to the Chair of the RTÉ Board (Mr. Terence O’Rourke) advising him of our intention to contact the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport requesting that they bring RTÉ before said committee to justify this move. See email here.
We did not receive a reply from the Board.
We wrote to them again on January 5th, 2026, seeking a response, but to no avail. See letter here.
Phil Healy wrote to the Joint Committee on February 3rd asking them to call the Board of RTÉ to a special hearing of the committee to justify their latest attempt to raid the assets of the RTÉ pension fund of €40m. to shore up their own finances. We also attached the 7-page document previously referred to. – See cover letter here.
The Joint Committee considered our request at their meeting on February 4th and advised that it has agreed in the first instance to request a written briefing from RTÉ and the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport on the matters raised and may be in further contact on receipt of same.
Since we wrote to the committee the matter has been taken up by a Dáil deputy and a journalist. Deputy Ken O’Flynn asked the Minister for Public Expenditure whether any guidance has been issued to public bodies regarding the protection of Defined Benefit Pension Schemes from being used to address funding shortfalls or restructuring costs; and whether RTÉ has been assessed for compliance with such guidance. John Burns wrote an article highlighting the matter in the Irish Independent on Sat. Feb 7th.
We wrote to Patrick O’Donovan, Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, calling on him to reject the RTÉ plans. see here
Our campaign to stop the raid has received the support of the Irish Senior citizens Parliament and the Retired Workers Committee of the ICTU. (See item 3 below)
We are waiting to see how this unfolds but if the Department of Communications, Culture and Sport decides to bring an application to change the rule before the Houses of the Oireachtas we will be asking members to contact their TDs and Senators asking them to oppose it. We will provide bullet points for you to use.
3) Irish Senior Citizens Parliament (ISCP)
On February 23rd Joe Little, our representative to the ISCP Executive, brought a motion to their meeting asking the Parliament to support our campaign to stop RTÉ raiding our pension scheme. The motion was seconded by the ESB Retired Staff Association and endorsed unanimously. The motion called on the relevant Government Ministers, Patrick O’Donovan and Jack Chambers to veto RTÉ’s plan to raid the savings of its 1,000-plus defined benefit pensioners by offloading the cost of administering the Superannuation Scheme to the scheme itself.
The motion pledged to oppose this cynical attack on older people’s incomes not least because if RTÉ gets its way, a costly precedent will be set for several thousand of ISCP members who depend on similar schemes sponsored by Commercial State Bodies (CSB’s).
Anne Flynn, who represents Region Number 2 of SIPTU’s Retired Members’ Section on the ISCP Executive, brought the motion to an ICTU meeting and has advised that it has the complete support of the Retired Workers Committee of ICTU.
The ISCP continues its campaign to establish:
- A Commissioner for Ageing and Older People.
- To get The Industrial Relations (Provisions in Respect of Pension Entitlements of Retired Workers) Bill 2021 through the Dáil.
We encourage you to lobby your public representatives to support this bill (in previous notifications referred to as the Bríd Smith Bill). It calls for pensioners’ representative groups to access Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) pensions negotiations. Currently pensioners have no representation at talks that can and do affect their pensions.
Remind your representatives that pensions are deferred wages and that pensioners have a right to a voice! We are retired workers but we are not retired voters!
4) Website
We are in the process of updating the website and linking recent posts to the category list. All Recent posts can be found on our Home page.
The In Memoriam Page, which you can access from the Category List on the right of the Home Page, has been updated to include the most recent deaths of colleagues that we are aware of. We are not in a position to offer a service such as previously offered by Charles Byrne but we plan on updating the page on a monthly basis.
For more immediate notifications of deaths of colleagues please check out the RTÉ Staff Past and Present Facebook page here. Members post there as soon as they learn of a death and often before notification of the death is published.
5) Further Pension Increases
We understand that the Trustees will look for another increase in our pension this year but at this stage we do not have any information on the percentage they will request. We will petition the Government to grant the increase and to do so more quickly than last year. Watch this space!
If you have any questions, please send them to rtersa2018@gmail.com
Best Regards to All
RTÉRSA Committee March 2026