A holiday in the sun and Christmas peace
JOE BLAIR and his wife Elma are looking forward to their first worry-free Christmas in years, with the prospect of backdated pension compensation payments starting in the new year.
Joe, 64, worked as a mechanical engineer in Belfast for most of his adult life. He paid into his employer’s pension fund — at Richardson’s Fertilisers — for 29 years.
He built up a pension pot which would have been worth £15,000 a year, to ensure he and Elma had a comfortable retirement.
But when the firm went bust in 2002, Joe was made redundant and the pension scheme was found to have a deficit.
Until now the couple, who live in Ballyclare, Co. Antrim, have relied on a small income from a picture-framing business which Joe runs from home.
The Financial Assistance Scheme would previously not pay out to Joe until he turned 65 because it did not recognise 62 — the retirement age in the Richardson scheme — as a pensionable age.
From next year he will receive payments, as well as a lump sum backdated to 2004. Joe said: “After such a long and
drawn-out fight, it seems surreal to think we will finally get the money, and backdated too.
“Elma and I will be able to have a holiday next year. Somewhere in the sun would be nice.
“We are just so grateful to Ros Altmann who is owed a huge debt of gratitude. And I have no doubt that without the continued support of the media putting pressure on the Government we would not have got what we wanted.
So a big thank you to the Daily Express.”