Ms Mary Murphy:

I am not convinced that this Bill would even limit the incidence of mandatary retirement and how often it would occur. It just changes the standards employers have to meet. I do not even know if they are harder standards to meet. It individualises the tests that currently exist in the Employment Equality Act. I do not know if that test is harder to meet when it is individualised versus when we are trying to establish it as a class. For this reason, the Bill seems pretty limited because all the problems we have with mandatory retirement will still exist.

Also, when we individualise the logic of mandatory retirement, what we are basically saying is that the standards that have to be met to get rid of an older worker are lower than the standards that have to be met to get rid of someone who is 34 and underperforming. It just means that people aged 66 have weaker employment protections.