Dr. Nat O'Connor:

Absolutely. A quota is one way of doing that but another thing to look at in terms of the structures is mandatory retirement. If there is a mandatory retirement clause as there is in many private sector contracts and, indeed, in public sector contracts - it may be 70 years but it is still mandatory retirement - an employer might think that if they are only going to have an employee for six or eight years before he or she must retire, they will not make the investment in that person's training. It is systematic in national training programmes, skill strategies and so on, but also in employers' decision-making, that when employees reach a certain age, as older workers they are blurred out. They are no longer considered the core audience. So much of our training focuses on the young and middle-aged worker but there is no reason for that.