Ms Ethel Buckley:

There is a strong pattern of women leaving the workplace in their 50s. Leaving it at any age has a detrimental impact on pension entitlements, but women are already disadvantaged in their pension entitlements, so we do not want to add to that. One of the ideas that we tried to popularise in our Stop67 campaign on the State pension's qualifying age was the notion that people could reduce their working hours as opposed to leaving completely. This is an idea that we want to be taken more seriously. We have spoken about women in their 60s. As it is conceptualised in Ireland, retirement happens at an arbitrary date and time based on someone's birthday. We would like to popularise the idea that people could prepare for retirement a number of years in advance, including by starting to work fewer hours. There is a demand among workers for that on a voluntary basis. It is progressive in terms of career advancement. It is often the reality in workplaces that older workers are promoted workers and are sitting in promoted roles. It can be an abrupt moment - I am sure that employers experience this as a challenge - when someone senior, experienced and qualified leaves the workplace. If so, why do we not plan for a reduction in that person's hours if he or she wishes and prepare someone else to enter a promoted role? There is a certain intergenerational solidarity element to this. I am glad that we have touched on this issue for workers.

We welcome the opportunity that next year's referendum on Article 41 will offer everyone to have a different conversation about paid and unpaid caring work. We in SIPTU embrace and celebrate our dual mandate in representing not only the interests of male and female workers who work in paid care, but also the interests of working people - our members' families and communities - on the issue of unpaid care. We are preparing for that discussion. There will be a national conversation about care work and the valuing, or undervaluing, of it. WorkEqual has pointed to a case in New Zealand. It involved an individual, but the trade union movement took the case. Through taking test cases, New Zealand is showing how work that tends to be done by women is valued and remunerated differently from work that tends to be done by men. My upbeat contribution to the conversation is that 2023 will be exciting insofar as the referendum will allow us the opportunity to consider as a country how we want to value the care work that is mainly done by women but in which we would like to see more men engaging.