Mr. Fergus Whelan:

When a person reaches the age of 65 and has no pension and their employer asks him to leave the premises, the correct word for that is dismissal. What happens when a person reaches the age of 65 is that he or she has to go out the door. Retirement is a nice thing, it sounds as if one is going to get a watch and pension. The correct word is dismissal. No analysis was carried out on the effects on the job market. When IBEC and ourselves were in with the Department of Social Protection we were asking the same questions but we did not agree on everything; basically, we were asking for clarity as to whether people would have to stay on. The attitude of the officials at that stage was that it was being implemented, if people want to stay on they can take their legal cases and see how they get on. This was done on the basis that we will just do it and let the fall-out be what it is. No analysis was done of the likely effect and we still do not know the likely effect.

In fairness, it is very hard to get a handle on what is being done. For instance, one of the aspects is that one is entitled to unemployment benefit for nine months, but is that the case? It is if one has not been unemployed in the recent years but quite a number of people when planning for retirement would have taken their redundancy package and signed on for unemployment and so on and would have been depending on it but not everybody gets it. Something bizarre has happened in respect of unemployment benefit and while I welcome some of the change, it is not a long-term but a short-term fix. As I understand it, a person who is entitled to unemployment benefit will not just get it for the nine months but will be given it for 12 months. That is certainly better than nothing and helps in a little way but it does not help for the second and third year. To some extent, the effect of that was to prevent a bigger backlash against this in the short term. The alternative is that if the pension age has to go up, by all means let it go up but let it go up for everybody and much more slowly than the present rate and let it go up to 68 when it has gone up to 68 for everybody else. Why should Irish workers be the only workers in Europe who do not get their pension until they are 68 years of age? By all means push it out but an injustice has been which can be mitigated if it is pushed out a little and only to 67 years of age.