You have a preserved pension from your 9 years in the pre-2004 scheme. You can take this at 60. Indeed, you should apply for it at 60 whether you retire from your current position then or not.
You are now in a post-2004 scheme (I assume it is not the Single Scheme, ie, post 2013?). If you want to retire fully at 60 from your current position you would have to either take Cost Neutral Early Retirement (CNER), or retire with a Preserved Pension. If you do the latter at 60 the pension benefits you have accrued in the current scheme will be paid normally at 65 (both lump sum and annual pension). If you take CNER at 60 the annual pension benefit will be paid immediately but reduced to 75% of its preserved value and the lump sum to 91%. There will be no reduction in the benefits payable from the old pre-2004 scheme.
The training years you propose to buy back will count towards your pension and are still worthwhile. However, I think that unfortunately they be be added to your current post-2004 scheme rather than to the original scheme (although I am not absolutely sure about that).
No. If you retire at 60 with a preserved pension from your current scheme you cannot access your AVC funds until 65. You could only access them if you took CNER.
Last question if I take CNER can I use AVC to maybe get another lump sum equal to the 9% and/or to push the annual pension benefit closer to 100%?
You should be able to increase your lump sum using the AVC, but Revenue set a maximum on this and it only relates to your current pension scheme and service (unless you had a seperate AVC when you were in the pre-2004 scheme). What is the total length of service you will have in the current pension scheme when you reach 60 ?
As an aside, when you left to work in Australia you weren't on a career-break from your nursing job by any chance? If so, you should have been entitled to resume in your old pension scheme on your return.
If you are “topping up” the lump sum (say where the main scheme rules are providing less than the Revenue max of 120/80ths) then retained benefits must be taken into account. So the max you can get is 120/80ths. If the scheme you are retiring from is paying less than this (perhaps due to short service), then the lump sum from the retained benefit can be added. If the total is still less than 120/80ths of final Salary, then the AVC fund can be used to increase the overall lump sum up to the Revenue max.
Yes, all retirement lump sums count IF you are trying to augment a scheme lump sum of less than 120/80ths. So for example, if you only have 20 years service in the retiring scheme (the minimum required to try and augment to 120/80ths) and the scheme is thus providing a lump sum of say 60/80ths, you can use other pension funds (such as an AVC fund) to top this up to 120/80ths. But if you are also getting or have gotten a lump sum from a retained benefit scheme, this is also taken into account in arriving at the 120/80ths figure.Thanks Conan. Just to confirm - In this example would a private sector pension lump sum also be counted towards the 120/80 limit ? I would guess not ?
Last question if I take CNER can I use AVC to maybe get another lump sum equal to the 9% and/or to push the annual pension benefit closer to 100
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