Minister for Social and Family Affairs Séamus Brennan revealed that he will be making an announcement soon on an all-Ireland free travel scheme for pensioners resident in all parts of the island.
"In the coming weeks, I will be able to announce that we have made a breakthrough on the extension of travel within the North for our citizens and on travel for Northerners on our services." Mr Brennan said he would study legal advice that the Government can extend free travel to Irish pensioners living elsewhere outside the Republic. The Minister was replying to Seán Crowe (SF, Dublin South West) who said that his colleague Dublin MEP Mary Lou McDonald had been told by the EU Commission that the State could go ahead with the proposal.
A commission reply, he said, had stated that EU law would not prevent the Government from granting a free travel pass to pensioners who receive a pension from Ireland but reside outside Ireland. However, EU law did require that if the free travel scheme was to be extended in such a way it would have to be non-discriminatory and would have to be available to all beneficiaries of an Irish pension regardless of their nationality.
Mr Brennan said that he would study the reply, noting that it was strong on non-discrimination. The Minister said there had been a number of requests and inquiries on the extension of entitlement to free travel in Ireland to Irish-born people living outside Ireland, or to those in receipt of pensions from his department, particularly in Britain, when they returned to Ireland for a visit. "The legal advice to me is that such proposals would be contrary to the EC treaty, which prohibits discrimination on the grounds of nationality."
"I want to do this. It is my intention. I will not give up on it. If one confines it to pensions, it is not particularly expensive.
"If I could get around the legal issue, there are many people in the UK to whom I really want to extend it who are outside the pensioner group and are perhaps in greater need of it: those in the pre-1953 category who have been over there for a long time. I would not be too hopeful in that area."
