Ms Mary Murphy:

There are examples. One of the good things about calling for the abolition of mandatory retirement or even just delaying it is that we have other countries we can look to. It has been in place for decades in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Of course, the USA's employment law in general is quite different from ours, so maybe there are not as many lessons to be gleaned from there, but with other countries we really can. In addition, with respect to delaying as opposed to wholesale abolition, there is the public service, where the retirement age now is 70 years and there is obviously a strong pension scheme there as well. There are, therefore, examples we can look for.

Another thing to say about it, which is perhaps a bit of a tangent, is it is important to not allow the practicalities or the reorganisation of traditional work forms and patterns to stand as a barrier to the change. Again, we are very firm about framing this as a human rights issue and an equality issue.