ARCOIreland recently met with Department of Defence (DoD) officials to discuss the introduction of the Payroll Shared Service Centre (PSSC). At this meeting it was announced that the PSSC has been established and will assume responsibility for pension payments from this October.
ARCOIreland members will be aware from previous postings that the PSSC, which is a Government initiative administered by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, aims to consolidate and integrate payrolls from the 18 payroll centres currently delivering this service to 53 Departments and Offices. All DoD payrolls – including those for retired military personnel in receipt of pensions – will now migrate to the PSSC.
DoD will write to all pensioners in September outlining how it proposes to manage the move and how it will impact on pensioners. DoD personnel directly involved in pension and salary payments will transfer to the PSSC but will remain based in Galway. The PSCC helpdesk will operate from Killarney and will deal with general pension queries for all public service pensioners. Galway will, however, continue to deal with queries in relation to what DoD terms ‘pension entitlements’. Pensioners will have the opportunity of opting to view their pension slips and P60 on line and printing them off where necessay. Where pensioners do NOT opt for this system the pension slip will continue, as before, to come through the letterbox every month.
ARCOIreland remains concerned in relation to:
- The difficulties further moves towards online pension services could present for some ARCOIreland members.
- The potential confusion that could result from having dual points-of-contact to deal with pension related queries.
- The fact that civil servants, with no previous knowledge or background in matters specific to Defence Forces' pensions, could eventually become responsible for administering military pension accounts.
