Cathal Berry (Kildare South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a final point. My understanding is that there are two people who served in the same platoons and who joined the Defence Forces on the same day. One is still a private and one is a sergeant. The sergeant makes the point that they went out of their way and went overseas loads of times and did the promotion competition, so why should they have to retire three years in advance of somebody who did not do those things? That is just the logical military point of view, namely, that we should be incentivising initiative and encouraging people to go for promotion rather than disincentivising them by bringing the mandatory retirement age down.