Further to my letter on pre-1979 government pensioners (May 22), I would like to emphasise the unfairness and illegality committed by the government in reducing our national insurance pension because we are also entitled to a service pension.

These two pensions were ours by right according to our contract of employment and, therefore, the government had no right to pass legislation that reduced our national insurance pension.

To clarify what this means in figures, I will give an example of a civil servant who worked for 42 years, retired at scale 4 in 2007 and who paid all his national insurance contributions.

His reduced national insurance pension is now €413 every four weeks and from which €129 are deducted for income tax, leaving him a net national insurance pension of €284 every four weeks. Were it not for his service pension, this pensioner would be unable to survive. So much for the government’s generosity.