Tom Neville (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I worked in recruitment for a number of years. In the same vein as Deputies Chambers' question, I want to ask about covert discrimination against older people in the workforce, which has been rife for the past 20 years, in my experience.

It is not just an Irish but a global problem. What does Ms Heaney think? About 18 months to two years ago the Government introduced an initiative for people over 50 years who were long-term unemployed. It gave them a grant of €10,000. Ms Heaney reminded me of something. There is something I have noticed among older men, in particular, who have worked on building sites as carpenters, for example. It is very physical manual labour, to which their bodies cannot stand up by the time they reach the age of 50 or 55 years. They come off CE schemes and into my office to tell me that no one will hire them because they are 56 or 57 years of age. Has the forum discussed this issue?