Mr. Declan Lawlor:

Under the current social welfare regulations, people now have the facility to defer receipt of the State retirement pension. On our courses, I ban the use of the phrase "old-age pension" because if it was still an old-age pension, none of our people would qualify for it for a number of years yet. People can now defer it until the age of 70. In most cases, I suspect, although there is no evidence to prove it yet, that will be adopted by people who want to continue in employment after 66 on the basis that if they draw the State pension, they will pay half of it in tax. Consequently, they will wait to draw the State pension until they finally stop working full time. It is a balance. We are making changes to social welfare that may not quite align with the regulations on retirement.