Existing members
Existing members will notice improvement in layout and presentation. Council wants to devote additional resources to the website to ensure that it is up to date and a source of timely information for members.
Potential members
If you are a retired Civil Servant or retired from Eircom, An Post, Coillte and not a member I am inviting you to join us.
The reason I believe that you should join is that recent experience of cuts to public service pensions, has identified a vulnerability we did not know existed. The conventional belief was that no Government would attack pensioner.
We discovered this did not extend to public service pensioners and a campaign of media led anti-public service and anti-public service pensioner’s rhetoric, emboldened Government to cut Public Service pensions.
The fact that nothing very terrible happened to Government ministers/deputies in terms of re-election has provided no disincentive to avoid pension cuts for the future.
This being the case, we as retired public servants, in association with other public service retirees, need to be sufficiently organised to provide the required disincentive to future attacks on pensions.
Maximising our numbers is a vital to any such strategy.
Local Networks
We are developing a local Branch Network and have branches in Donegal, Sligo, Galway, midlands, North East,Dublin , Wexford, Cork and Limerick.
We are actively setting up new branches in Waterford, Kilkenny, Portlaoise and Kerry. These are not only a great source of support for each other but also provide a social network, often much missed by retirees.
The present subscription is a very modest €20.00 per annum. We use this money to fund four bulletins a year ( from 2018), an AGM in Dublin in May, a consultative forum in Dec for Branch activists and visits to Branches.
The subscription is deducted at source and the cost is €.77 per cheque. It is money well spent and I would urge you to join us.
Mary Farrell
