The Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs has called on the government to investigate claims that employees who became disabled while performing work duties have not received the full pensions they paid for.

The committee is also seeking an amendment to the Pensions Act to bring income continuance schemes under the remit of the pensions ombudsman. Some 238,000 workers are insured under income continuance schemes, 6,000 of whom are disabled.

Labour Party TD Willie Penrose, who is chairman of the Oireachtas committee, said an inquiry should be set up to investigate claims that disabled workers were receiving pensions 'frozen' at the wage level when they became disabled and not at current wages.

Penrose made the call after hearing a presentation from former employees of Tara Mines, the mining company based in Navan Co Meath, who claim that pension payments owed to disabled workers have instead been paid to the company in the form of subsidies.

The ex-employees, led by Independent Meath councillor Philip Cantwell, claim the subsidies should have been paid to them directly. According to Cantwell, workers have received pension payments based on their earnings at the time they became disabled, which he described as "a pittance."

Ten workers were killed in Tara Mines and another 100 were disabled in workplace accidents. Each worker had been paying five per cent of their salary into a pension scheme but problems arose when disabled workers turned 65 and were given pensions based on the wages they had earned at the time they ceased work for the company, in some cases 30 or 40 years before.

Cantwell claims that monies that should have been paid to disabled workers have returned to Tara Mines as a subsidy to the pension fund.

Pension contributions to the men have been frozen at the wage level from the time when the accidents occurred, he said.

Penrose says the Pensions Act should be amended as a priority when the Dail returns in September, and income continuance schemes should be put under the remit of the pensions ombudsman.

"We need to try to ascertain figures for how many people have been affected by this, " he said. "The working of schemes like this needs to be investigated in full and we have to investigate why so many people feel aggrieved at not getting the pensions they believe they paid for."