Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

While I will get a more detailed answer for the joint committee, it is an equality issue in part. It pertains to the age at which someone must retire and to me, it would make a sense to align the pension age and the retirement age. Thereafter, of course, it also is up to individual places of employment and the contracts they have with employees. In respect of self-employed people to whom Deputy Butler has referred, I assume self-employed people might keep their directorships or self-employment for the year. However, there is no doubt that there is an increasing number of older people who wish to stay working for longer and who have the capacity, good health and everything else to do that. Equally, there are others who would find it to be stressful and there also are many people in between, who would like to do some work, albeit perhaps fewer hours, as they get older.