Call for end to mandatory retirement age

A major EU-funded research project into the needs of older workers has called for the abolition of the mandatory retirement age.

The call was one of the key recommendations of the Senior Select Retain and Retrain partnership, which published its final report today.

The partnership consists of Age Action, Fás, Ictu, Partas and Contact Recruitment.

Age Action chief executive Robin Webster said that compulsory retirement ages, whether in the public service or not, should be removed.

He said the removal of the mandatory retirement age would not only give workers who wish to continue working the option to do so, but would also enable employers retain some of their most experienced and valuable staff.

"The forthcoming Green Paper on pensions provides a rare opportunity to coordinate our employment and pensions policies to enable older people to continue to work for as long as they wish," Mr Webster said.

"Such an approach would require much greater flexibility and, more importantly, a positive attitude to older workers."

The number of people aged over-65 is expected to increase by over 60 per cent over the next 20 years, from 436,000 in 2002 to 698,000 in 2021. Currently just 8 per cent of people aged over 65 are still working.

Research conducted as part of the project found that 38 per cent of firms considered the promotion prospects for those over 50 to be less than for those under 50.

These figures were higher in the public sector (41 per cent) and the retail sector (40 per cent). However, six out of 10 firms (59 per cent) perceived age to be unimportant in the recruitment of staff.

The chief executive of development agency Partas, John Kearns, stressed that Ireland's changing demographics meant the issues raised in the report had to be addressed. He said the EU target is to increase the average age at which people stop working in the EU to 65.4 years by 2010.

"If we are going to achieve this new approaches are needed to retaining existing employees and retraining other workers," he said.

© 2007 ireland.com