Industrial Disputes
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-18
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David Cullinane (SF), Waterford

It is not a case of whether the workers were the victims of an injustice; in my view, they were. As I said earlier, at the time those workers should have been given three options: the preserved benefits option, a transfer value or a refund. They were only given one option, which was the refund. The quarrel seems to relate to the fact that the Minister and the Department are of the view that this was a matter for the company and the trustees of the pension fund as opposed to the State and, therefore, the State does not have a liability. However, the Minister confirmed in his response that the Hogan case "related to the failure of the State to adequately transpose into Irish law the relevant provisions of the European Union’s insolvency directive". He went on to say:
... a mediated settlement was reached between the parties to that legal action. The mediated settlement applied to all persons who were members of the Waterford Crystal staff and factory pension schemes on the date of wind-up of the schemes.
That is true. The problem, however, is that these workers were not given the option to be members of that scheme. The only option they had, as part of their redundancy, was a refund. That is an injustice. It is wrong that the Minister will not meet those workers because they want to better understand the advice of the Attorney General and determine whether he had all the information when he made his judgment. It is incumbent upon the Minister to meet the group and talk to it about the advice he received from the Attorney General.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-18