John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. On the last point, in essence we have compulsory retirement. While I am familiar with the court case the Minister referenced, prior to that there have been many other court cases that ruled the other way. The difficulty is the EU legislation was introduced back in 2012 is open to interpretation. That is the difficulty here. While I note the recent court case, there have been many other court case where the decision went the other way. That is wrong. The serious error and anomaly, and I believe the Minister has admitted it himself, is that when these changes were brought in with the abolition of the State transition pension, is that we have 65 year olds who are forced to retire. Many of those forced to retire, do so against their own will and are forced to sign on for a jobseeker's payment and those people would have preferred to stay working. Many women would have preferred to stay working to build up their contributions to try to get a higher pension.

I think the Minister acknowledges that the changes that were introduced in 2012 were unfair. He said there were no winners, that everybody was a loser. The Minister has come before us with flags flying, whether it is part of his leadership campaign, he is now talking about reinstating this or that, using the so-called savings generated by the fraud campaign to increase the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance. Perhaps as part of his campaign, the Minister might give a commitment to those pensioners who are forced on to a jobseeker's payment to reinstate the State transition pension payment. Again, the Minister refers to other countries that have raised the retirement age. I put it to the Minister that what we in Ireland are doing is going far beyond what other countries are doing. A number of countries have increased the retirement age up to 66 years. We are proposing to increase it to 68 years. That is far higher than many other countries at an European level.