A number of employees and former employees of ACC Bank have brought High Court proceedings claiming the bank had concealed from them the true effects - allegedly much lower pensions - of a pension integration scheme implemented 30 years ago.
In court yesterday, Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan rejected a preliminary bid by the bank to stop the action on grounds of alleged inordinate and excessive delay in initiating it.
The proceedings were initiated in 2001 by five plaintiffs - Charles Kellegher, Christopher Collins, Matthew Holdon, Patrick J Lyons and John Melly, all current employees of the bank - and by 40 others.
The plaintiffs claim the net effect of integration of their pensions in 1976 is that they will be much less that what they would otherwise have been.
They also claim that this fact was concealed from them all along, and that they only became aware of the true effects of integration in 1997, almost 20 years after the scheme was first introduced.
ACC bank had asked the High Court to dismiss the case on the grounds of inordinate and excessive delay in the institution of the proceedings.
In her reserved judgment yesterday, the judge ruled that while there was some period of inexcusable delay in bringing the claims, this had caused no special prejudice to the ACC's ability to defend the proceedings and she dismissed the bank's application.
The judge added she was satisfied that the employees only became aware of what integration meant for them in 1997, when they were first supplied by the bank with figures relating to their pensions.
The judge said she had concluded, as a matter of probability on the evidence before the court on this motion and on certain assumptions made regarding the plaintiff's ability to understand material relating to the pensions, that the nature of the information given by the Bank - or lack thereof - must have contributed to the assumed failure of the plaintiffs to understand the true effect of integration until 1997.
However, in reaching that conclusion, she stressed that she was not determining any fact in relation to alleged concealment by the ACC.
That was a distant issue not appropriate for determination on the motion before the court.
While noting the bank had provided copies of benefit statements addressed to four of the five named employees dated 1996, the judge said there was no evidence from the the bank that such statements were actually sent to the men.
Neither had the men been cross-examined about statements which they had made in affidavits to the effect they did not receive such information until a year later.
Documents sent in 1996, which related to early retirement, also did not make the effects of integration clear to the employees, she said. While she accepted there had been prejudice to the bank as a result of the death of a key witness in 1982, the judge said that in itself did not mean it would be unfair to require ACC to defend the action.
The also court had heard that, in 1976, ACC changed its pension scheme to an integrated plan.
Employees were given the option of either continued participation on a non-integrated basis or integrating.
The new scheme had the effect of reducing the pension entitlement of employees in consideration of a reduced contribution. Moreover, it also reduced the bank's contributions in respect of those who joined up.
One of the plaintiffs, Mr John Melly, said he had in 1997 received a personalised benefit statement relating to his own position.
In an affidavit to the court, he said this was the first time the bank had provided him with such information.
Prior to 1997, the plaintiffs say they did not realise that their actual pensions were based on a percentage of a reduced pensionable salary, and not a percentage of actual salary.
It was only when they got those statements from the bank, or from later conversations with colleagues, that they learned, if they took early retirement, they would receive a reduced pension even before they got the state pension at the age of 65.
The full hearing of the action will take place at a later date.
