John Ellis

Your Money & You

John Ellis

Sean’s pension pot ... and €500m. unclaimed

I was six months old when Sean started work in a local retail company, since gone, and 13 when he left. During some of that period he paid into the company’s pension scheme. Over the next 50 odd years, on and o , he wondered what had become of his contributions to the plan.

Sean read my article about the need for people to keep a record of their pension pots. I wrote that “many people may have several pension pots, probably managed separately through di erent employer, trustee, or pension provider making it very di cult to arrive at a single gure of how much you have put aside and its estimated value at retirement”.

I cautioned on the danger that pensions can fall between the cracks through moving house and forgetting to tell your pension provider, loss of paperwork, employers no longer trading, pension providers no longer in Ireland or amalgamation and re-amalgamation with another provider, all of these in Sean’s case.

It’s no wonder money seems to disappear!

According to experts there is currently more than €500 million in unclaimed pensions funds in Ireland. I was at a recent seminar and was speaking with other advisors about the contractions in the market between broker amalgamation and the loss of so many insurance companies – we listed o quite a number of companies including, Abbey Life, Life Assurance of Ireland, Scottish Provident, Friends First, Royal Liver (another on-going case we have, but the need of in date photo ID is causing a problem!), and Norwich Union – all gone, renamed or subsumed into a bigger entity.

But the good news is providers with unclaimed funds must keep a register of unclaimed policies. ey must if at all possible contact customers to tell them how to claim the proceeds of the policies and they are required to advertise in the national press twice a year to inform customers whose policies are worth less than €500.

If after 15 years there is no ‘customer-initiated transactions’ the money is transferred to the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA). e NTMA is a state body which operates with a commercial remit to provide asset and liability management services to Government including managing the unclaimed funds from dormant accounts.

According to Citizens Advice these funds are used to support “the personal and social development of people who are economically or socially disadvantaged, the educational development of people who are educationally disadvantaged and people with a disability (within the meaning of the Equal Status Acts)”.

But if people become aware of their own or a relative’s policy(s) and nd the funds have been transferred to the NTMA they can contact them and apply to reclaim the funds as even though they are transferred they still remain the property of the account holder. ey may be reclaimed at any time from the original account holding branch, or Head O ce as appropriate, and this is where Seán’s money lies!

When Sean called initially I asked for the usual to track down the pension; paperwork – any written information which would have policy no.s, company names etc. Nothing was available so getting information wasn’t going to be straightforward especially with the passage of time.

So, I began the process with a letter of authorisation allowing me to write to each insurance company to see if they had a pension in Sean’s name, as all we had was his date of birth. One after another company came back saying they had no record for his date of birth and one asking that we send them documents with a policy number to aid the process!

Sean and I didn’t hold out much hope until last Tuesday a letter landed on my desk con rming that Sean did indeed have a pension from the Sixties with a company since amalgamated, and the funds had been transferred to the NTMA but could be reclaimed.

According to the rules we are applying through the insurance provider to have the funds reclaimed with hopefully interest attaching. We will then mature the plan and Sean will in a few weeks enjoy the proceeds of his long-lost pension.

If you think you might have funds or policies oating about unclaimed call me and we can investigate.

‘No wonder money seems to disappear!

John@ellis nancial.ie 0868362633

Feature

e Clancy Brothers, and Tullahought

Hello folks, I wrote this several years ago, for a newspaper. e golden nights, as described, Are gone forever. e Clancy Brothers, and Tullahought – a small village in the south of Co Kilkenny. It was about Halloween time, over thirty years ago, and we were all gathered in Tullahought of a Wednesday night – the biggest night of the week in Power’s Pub.

Jim was dishing out the pints, and Margaret – that great old character and musician – was leading the music, making her ddle do her bidding.

A lot of local musicians were there, the craic ying along, when in the door walks the Clancy Brothers – all four of them – then at the height of their fame and powers. Men who had never forgotten their roots – who were world-famous – and are still spoken of with awe and a ection to this very day. ere was no coaxing needed with these fellows, who would set up and sing for one man and his dog as quickly and happily as they would for an appearance in Carnegie Hall – the greatest music venue in all of America - where they performed for Presidents - and plumbers.

It wasn’t long before the instruments were brought in – a concertina and a couple of banjos – and that was it. No ampli ers needed – the great deep-forest sonorous dark tones were a Clancy trademark.

So, the music started up and rolled along. en, at about twelve o’clock, when the night was really starting to y, the most gigantic of thunderstorms struck the Tulla hillside – and out went the few glims! A big cheer for the mighty mountainsmashing thunder-god, or, who was obviously peeved by our heroes organ-deep singing! Other ‘gods’ on his mountain? Crash! Slam! He’d x ‘em, so he would! But Margaret rummaged out a few candles, and or was down-faced – though he still raged and marched and furied hither and thither, splitting asunder the dark mountain skies over old Tulla.

Now, in the ickering candlelight, the scene attained an ethereal ancient quality, with the old pub still rattling under re from or’s kettledrumming artillery, and eerie blue ashes lighting the faces of the four lads, as they put on the show of our lives.

‘ e Jug of Punch’ ‘Johnny McAdoo’, ‘Finnegan’s Wake’, and other rousing Irish songs were gloried into our memories by those bass-organ voices - interspersed with the softest, sweetest and most plangent of love songs – the most swooning of crooning laments for the death of youth and beauty – and the most gentle softchanted soul-embracing ageold madrigals of regret for loves lost, and years wasted.

All of those beautifullyexpressed sentiments, emotions, and events, were redolent of the fates that made - or broke - our fragile lives, in those strange happy/sad topsy-turvy times; they were collectively known as ‘life’..

With the lightning ashing, the thunder rolling over Tulla like the mighty cannons of Armageddon, the candle light shimmering on the rapt faces of the oh-so-lucky listeners, and all our old childhood favourites being sung to us by Liam, Paddy, Bobby and Tom, we all knew that in that small old pub, out on the edge of nowhere, there was something unique and mystic happening amongst us – something that would stay with those of us who were fortunate enough to be there, to the end of our times. en, during a ‘Refreshment Break’{??!}, Tom Clancy beckoned me into the old pub kitchen – where a huge skillet of crubeens was simmering merrily away over an open re, un-knowing of their emptybellied fate.

Tom had known my mother – an acclaimed pianist – and enquired if she still played - as he and Paddy used call in to see and ‘perform’ with her – and try to buy our old quern! Sadly, she had passed away. Chatting to him over lovely pints, sitting at the old table, I told him of my love for poetry and drama. He could draw you out, could Tom.

He asked me if I’d like to hear a segment from one of his performances in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’, in which he’d performed on Broadway. Of course! A dream!

Tom stood there then, at the end of the old pub kitchen table, with the heavens crashing and ashing, and the thunder growling and prowling like a great prehistoric beast all round our imsy little shelter, and narrated and plotted and wrapped that unique Clancy voice around the wonderful words, navigating his way through O’Neill’s splendid work, as his brothers struck up the beautiful and plaintively sad ‘Skye Boatman’ in the room behind us. Aye, the barrelchested, kind, and gifted Tom gave me a present that night that I’ve never forgotten - the loan of his rare melodious talent.

When I think of that singing - like the surging waves of a warm summer night-wind soughing through the branches and leaves of a mighty oak tree - I thank whatever God who would bother listening to me for placing me there amongst the whiskey-barrel deepsavannah Clancy voices – the men who turned mere words into hymns of love and loss and beauty, and poetry and prose into magic lanterns of music. And with the elements lashing the skies and driving ying clouds storming over our dear old Tullahought’s hilly village, I knew that there would never be any performance or play in this life again that I could set against it.

For his nale, Tom recited his favourite omas Hardy poem – ‘Channel Firing’ - for me. I’ll just give two remembered verses here..

“Last night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our co ns where we lay, And broke the chancelwindow squares -

We thought it was our Judgement Day.

e glebe cow drooled – still God cried - ‘No!!

It’s gunnery practice out at sea!

Just as before you went below, e world is as it used to be’”

Tom didn’t know how prescient the great words were; he was with us only a few more years.

But I – and all who were present - knew that a little bit of a wishful hoped-for Heaven had been shown to us, on that wild racingcloud stormy night, in old Tullahought.

PS Power’s Pub is now reopened, by Margaret’s nephew, Pat.

Crubeens are still served, and music again echoes round the ancient hillside.

All the Clancy Brothers are gone now, as is Tommy Makem. eir likes will never be seen again.

Ned E

Disclaimer

e opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily re ect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of e Kilkenny Observer.