Garda's pension plea was rejected
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Mr Cowen told the garda a pension change "cannot be introduced on an individual basis".
The revelations come after the Irish Independent yesterday outlined how Mr Cowen inserted a special clause in a new bill so the former Education Minister could claw back unpaid pension payments.
Last night, the Irish Independent was confidentially shown a letter from Mr Cowen to a senior Fianna Fail figure who had made inquiries on behalf of the ex-garda.
The former high-ranking garda had left the force before pension entitlements were guaranteed for every year of service. The garda wanted to claim pension entitlements for the years he served before he left the force. But Mr Cowen refused, saying the implications of the move could be "very numerous and costly".
The letter was sent on official Department of the Finance 'Office of the Minister' stationery and was dated May 5, 2007.
It said: "You will appreciate that a change along the lines proposed cannot be introduced on an individual basis personal to (name deleted), nor would it be possible to amend the relevant legislation at this late stage to introduce such a change for all public servants."
But Mr Cowen knew at the time he wrote the response, less than six months ago, that he had personally sanctioned the inclusion of a special clause for Michael Woods in the drafting of a totally unrelated Financial Markets Bill.
That go-ahead was communicated to Mr Woods at the beginning of this year, Mr Cowen's former Cabinet colleague said last night.
Mr Woods lost €75,000 in pension entitlements because he did not apply for it within six months.
That deadline is now to be scrapped because of Mr Cowen's intervention and Mr Woods will now be given his back-pay.
The case of the ex-garda is different to that of Mr Woods, but does involve a similar cut-off. In his case, the garda missed the "preservation of benefits" introduced to the garda pension scheme with effect from October 1976.
Mr Cowen admitted in his refusal letter that when the pension was introduced, "no provision was made to provide superannuation benefits for those former gardai who left before that date, except in certain circumstances where they subsequently take up another appointment in the public service. The fact is, therefore, that under the terms of the Garda Siochana Scheme, [the applicant] does not have any superannuation entitlements and it simply would not be possible to resolve this case individually on an administrative basis."
However, he has now done just that for Mr Woods in a Bill that goes to the Senate today.
In the letter, Mr Cowen went on: "The difficulty, as I explained to you, is that any amendment to the cut-off date for the preservation of pensions would . . . have to cover all those public servants who resigned prior to the relevant cut-off date."
The former garda, whose case was taken up by a Fianna Fail Oireachtas member with Mr Cowen, said last night: "The decision of the Government to pass legislation for the provision of a retrospective pension to former Fianna Fail Minister Michael Woods is in blatant contrast to the refusal to grant pensions to former gardai who left the force for any reason before October 1, 1976."
