Mr. Tim Duggan:

-----we are not the only country increasing the state pension age or increasing it to the level we have proposed. Many European countries are doing exactly the same as we are but they are doing it in a more complicated way. It is a pretence that Ireland will be alone in reaching a pension age of 68 years by 2028. That message is misleading and I would not like it to go out.

On the mandatory retirement age, we have always said that there was no such thing in Ireland. If people retire from an occupation at 65 years, that is a matter of the contract between them and their employer. There is no statutory retirement age and there never has been. The reform plan sets out a number of measures to extract people from what has become a societal norm. European law does not necessarily support this norm and objective justification is now needed for setting retirement ages in employment contracts. Employers must consider very carefully how they will deal with the law in this area, which changed in 2015.

As my colleagues noted, the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, has issued guidance for employers on that particular area and the European Human Rights Commission, EHRC, has issued guidance on fixed-term contracts. We hope the combination of European law, the WRC guidance and the EHRC guidance and the consultative forums undertaken by IBEC will result in employers grasping this issue. If they do not do so - and the roadmap sets this out - towards the end of this year or at the beginning of next year, we will start a process of assessing other measures that could be introduced. These may include some of the measures to which the Deputy referred. However, we want to give employers the opportunity to get to grips with the issue.