Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is general agreement on this Bill. It has been coming for a long time. People have sought it because of the gap between the retirement age at 65 and the State pension being available at 66. I have a constituent who went out sick in June of this year and was on illness benefit. He retired in October, a month ago, and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection said that he should stay on the illness benefit rather than going on jobseeker's allowance for the year since it was the same payment and would not have much effect. He was impacted by the fact that the doctors insist that he has to come back every week for his certificate. He pays €15 every week to get that certificate and we are trying to get that sorted out for him.

That gap has caused problems for many people in different ways. It has impacted on them in different ways. This Bill is for public servants only. A section provides for a new compulsory retirement age of 70 for public servants as defined by the Bill. It also provides that the Minister may make an order for a further increase in the compulsory retirement age for the relevant public servants in the future, up to a maximum of 75 years. There are also provisions in the Bill that a Minister must consider before making such an order.

The other part of the Bill that I think is important is that those who have about 38 years of pensionable work done will have the option to stay for another two years to accrue pension entitlements up to 40 years. It is only should they wish to do so and it is important that that is reflected from this Bill into the workplace. I will make the same point made by Deputy Bríd Smith. I was asking around how this would impact or if it has impacted on anybody. I believe many health workers are affected too, whereby they retired this year or late last year. They got their lump sum package. They are probably on approximately €100. It may depend on how many years one has on one's pension. They are rehired on the first point of the pre-1995 pay scale. That effectively means that they lose approximately €180 a week and their percentage and allowances too. This has a big impact on one's wages. One is rehired until 66, when one has to go. I want to make the same point as Deputy Bríd Smith, that this has to be looked at. I will be looking at it and trying to amend the Bill, looking at how we can retrospectively deal with this cohort of workers who want to stay on a bit longer and to work, possibly up to the age of 70, and we are not giving them that option. That is discriminatory, even though the Government knew this when bringing in the circular in December 2017 to allow that interim situation to be dealt with. These workers had no choice. They could not refuse if they wanted to stay on to 66. There has to be a way to facilitate those workers. There are not many but they exist. The Minister sent a circular to human resources units in the public service asking them to check if people who have taken that interim deal would be interested in staying on after 66 and to see how many workers would be affected. There would be no cost to the State and the Minister should seriously look at dealing with it.

It is not workers' fault but in many ways the fault of the Government for not bringing this legislation in much quicker. Deputy Brady has a Bill from a year and a half ago that could have been processed through the Dáil a year ago. A similar Bill was tabled by someone from the Labour Party a number of years ago, before the last Dáil. There were opportunities to deal with this issue and this small cohort of workers who should not be discriminated against would not be in this situation if it was dealt with. I support the general thrust of the Bill. It should be made an option for private sector workers too but we are dealing with this specific Bill. I know Age Action has addressed the matter of this group of workers. Can we deal with it before this Bill is enacted? I ask the Minister to seriously consider that.

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