Interesting data on who gets paid what in the public service

jjm2016 said:
Firefly for a start if you are 65 in 2017 what year were you born in,4161 and 12173 ,
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A classic, jjm, probably your best yet.

You have a point, Firefly certainly seems to have confused some of his numbers.

Firefly said:
Projected retirement date at age 65 01/01/2035

Service from today to retirement 5 Years and 0 Days
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Doesn't stack up


But, wow, I have no idea what you are trying to tell us.
 
So it appears that gippiman is correct and firefly and creamyegg are wrong. There is a social fund.
 
cremeegg said:
You have a point, Firefly certainly seems to have confused some of his numbers.
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I was trying to use the website as best as I could to show the retirement pension for someone who joined after 1995 with 22 years experience. Please, feel free to use the site yourselves to arrive at this figure. I think what I have posted is pretty close "Total reckonable service 22 Years and 179 Days Pensionable Remuneration €37,000"
 
Now this begs all kinds of questions ( lets for now stay on pensions ) Contribution rate some pay in as little as a few hundredth in contributions per year and they will qualify for the contributory pension , someone on 50000 per year would pay in over 7000 euro prsi.someone on 100000 will pay over 14000 euro someone earning 100000 and a house rented will pay more again, A single contractor set up if the taken an income of 50000 euro will pay 1000 prsi. someone signing on for credits pay zero. The biggest question of all is when you add up all the people on PRSI A1 public and private paying 14.75% between employer/Employee and you take that amount away from the total paid into the fund each year how much did the rest pay in,

we now know there is a fund with a total for each year we also know that 14.47% is paid from payroll each week to this fund by people on PRSI Class A1 and it is linked directly to prsi Class A1 comtributions,

Over to you
 
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For the life of me I don't know what you are talking about or asking me. You seem to be obsessed with PRSI contributions so I could advise you to open your own dedicated thread and/or seek professional, finance advice. I was replying to a specific point about the contributions of public sector workers to their own pension which doesn't come close to self-financing.
 
jim said:
So it appears that gippiman is correct and firefly and creamyegg are wrong. There is a social fund.
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Its cremeegg not creamyegg, really, we split with that side of the family years ago.

Looking at the information presented by gipimann and myself I think it is a reasonable summary of the facts to say that, There is no Fund.

If you are still not convinced follow gipimann's link and ask yourself, if there is a fund, what is the balance on it.
 
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Once you are making contributions and have a full record of contributions you qualify for a contributory pension. If you earned €100k per annum for 30 years or if you earned €20k per annum over the same period it doesn't matter - you get the same pension.

Contributions are not ring fenced - it is not a personal fund, it is essentially tax. As pointed out by cremeegg and in the link provided by gipiman - there is no PRSI Fund. If you click into the links, you see a breakdown of the contributions made in the year and the payments made during the year - the surplus or deficit of which is funding/funded by general taxation.

You seem to have an issue with paying too much PRSI and not getting a better pension than someone who hasn't paid in as much. Tough luck unfortunately, that is the way our society works
 
I really don't understand what jjm is driving at as regards PRSI and pensions...

The way I look at it, leaving pre-1995 public servants aside, everyone who is paying Class A (and their employer!) is paying the same proportion of their income in PRSI in order to obtain the benefits it provides, one of which is the State pension. This is regardless of what sector they work in or indeed the level of their earnings, so the CEO gets the same state pension as the cleaner who earns a tiny fraction of their salary.

Separate from that, the public sector employee pays a pension contribution (and into the future the PRD is being converted to a further pension contribution) towards their defined benefit pension. The benefit they actually obtain in the future for these payments will depend on the level of the state pension when they retire.

The way I look at it in relation to my own situation is that I could at some point, take a private sector job which would pay me a higher total remuneration (including benefits like bonus, employer pension contributions and healthcare that the public sector don't offer). But there is a trade off, and as part of evaluating the two sides of the scale I factor in things like the security of my job and the value of the defined benefit pension, against the increased take home pay from the private sector.

People grinding their axe about "gold plated" public sector pensions, and using the example of someone retiring with a pension of say €50k+, tend to conveniently overlook the various reports on public sector pay that find people at senior management levels are actually substantially lower paid relative to their private sector equivalents and the gold plated pension is one of the main reasons why many of those people remain in the public sector.

Including the PRD I think I'm paying around 13% of my gross pay towards pension, and I'm fully aware that this is not the economic or actuarial cost of the benefits I'll accrue. The difference (the amount that my employer is going to cover), in my tallying up of things, broadly equates to their contribution to my pension, no different than in most large private sector organisations DC schemes where employers will match or exceed the employee's contributions.
 
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"The gold plated pension is one of the main reasons why many of those people remain in the public sector" along with the public sector generally being a doddle compared to the private sector.
 
Torblednam
Are you on about my post
Lots of employers in the private sector including my own employer cover a lot of the cost of there employees pension contribution not just in the public service,

maybe not for you but lots of public servants on lower grades when you add all of there contributions along with the 14.75% PRSI will have over paid for what they will get out of it like lots in the private sector

from time to time you have 4% pot calling the kettle black posters on hear,
 
jim said:
"The gold plated pension is one of the main reasons why many of those people remain in the public sector" along with the public sector generally being a doddle compared to the private sector.
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You would need to back that up as it's a sweeping generalisation.
 

Hi torblednam,

There are going to anomalies for sure, but the various reports that have come out recently point to wages in the public sector being higher than those in the private sector. When you add in job security and defined benefit pensions to the mix the overall package seems way out of kilter for many.

Firefly.
 

Well the main recent report was the report by the Public Sector Pay Commission. Chapter 5 covers pay, excluding pensions (which gets a separate chapter), and in its conclusions it states:

"In terms of the earnings distribution, higher public service pay premia are present at the lower end of the earnings distribution and discounts are present at the upper end of the distribution. According to the CSO, private sector earnings increased by 1.7% in 2015 and 2% in 2016 whereas public service earnings, net of PRD, increased by 0.6% in 2015 and 0.5% in 2016. Therefore, it is likely that the public service premium has continued to fall in 2015 and 2016 as private sector earnings continued to increase at a faster pace than public service earnings."

In simple English, the upper end of the public sector is actually lower paid than equivalents in private sector. Which would accord with my personal experience.

The premium in the value of pension is a compensating factor for this shortfall on pay.
 
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torblednam said:
In simple English, the upper end of the public sector there is actually lower paid than equivalents in private sector. Which would accord with my personal experience.
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I'd say you're right.

torblednam said:
The premium in the value of pension is a compensating factor for this shortfall on pay.
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I think the pension is key for a lot of public sector workers and with job security it's why it seems so little leave.
 
I really do have to laugh when I see the constant references to " gold plated " public sector pensions.
The real rolls royce pensions are enjoyed by those , including myself , who in addition to their occupational pensions will , if we attain the appropriate age , receive the State OAP.
Both myself & my wife retired on an incentivised scheme from Bank of Ireland & currently our pensions provide us with a combined gross income of approx. €65,000 which will hopefully increase in the fullness of time to €90,000 when the OAP kicks in .
In addition by commuting a portion of our final pension we were able to access a combined tax free capital sum of approx. €225,000 ( including statutory redundancy of €42,000 odd each ) & then sign on - in my case for 15 months.
I know that we are extremely fortunate to have been able to avail of a DB pension scheme & to have had the huge advantage of working in a hugely unionised workplace who negotiated the aforementioned incentivised scheme but it would be interesting to know how many current & putative
Pensioners receive or will receive the OAP in addition to an occupational pension , I know that my late father who worked for Smurfits did & I know that my brother will also hopefully.
Sure public sector pensions are attractive but they certainly are not premier league status .
 

Well Deise, that's pretty impressive!

Sure, there are always going to be better pensions, but in the norm, the companies that offer those are profitable (notwithstanding BOI's bailout). In addition, the staff numbers are relatively small. The issue with the PS pension bill is the number of staff involved and the fact that their employer is still borrowing to keep the lights on.
 
Anyone employed in the public service for last 22 years paying PRSI A1 are paying for the same as private sector workers on the first 24500 of there wages ,Just before someone corrects me i know they will get a lump sum. after 24500 the state public servace pension kick in ,there are lots of co funded private sector employment .

We could just as well say state is not paying it way and is given large tax breaks to the private sector workers to fund there pensions I benefit myself ,

I expect someone will say the state is investing along with you and will get some of it back in taxes.I will be getting a large tax free lump sum that the state help me build up and they will be getting none of it,
 
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