Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies for their useful contributions. It is clear from their remarks that there is general support for the Bill. Once this legislation has been commenced, public servants who reach the age of 65 will be in a position to continue working until they reach the age of 70 on their current terms and conditions, should they wish to do so. While the temporary interim arrangements accommodate public servants to work until they reach the age of 66, the age at which they qualify for the State pension, I accept that these arrangements are not ideal. Legislative change is required to address the matter effectively. Once the Bill is commenced, no additional public servants will need to avail of the interim arrangements. The Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, looks forward to a constructive debate on Committee Stage. I hope that we can pull together to ensure the timely enactment of this Bill so that as many public servants as possible are in a position to benefit from it. There will be more time on Committee Stage to discuss in detail the issues raised by Deputies, but I will make some brief comments on the main issues raised before concluding.

Deputy Cowen mentioned the time it has taken for this Bill to be brought before the Oireachtas. The policy change was approved by Government on 5 December 2017 and the Bill was published only eight months later, on 9 July 2018. While this is a short Bill, a significant amount of legal consideration and stakeholder consultation is necessary in the preparation of any legislation and this Bill was no exception.

The Bill affects in the region of 180,000 individual public servants with different pension schemes and retirement age provisions. It was essential that the necessary research was carried out to ensure that all of the intended cohort was covered by the terms of the Bill. The Bill passed through the Seanad in July, a matter of days after it was published and commenced Second Stage in the Dáil in October, only a few weeks after Deputies came back from the summer recess. While further progress of the Bill through the Dáil is now ultimately a matter for the Business Committee and the Members of the Oireachtas, I know the Minister is hoping that it will be treated as a priority to enable the Bill to complete the remaining Stages in this House without delay.

Deputy Cowen also questioned the exclusion of "new entrants" from the definition of "relevant public servant" in section 2. The term "new entrant" as defined in the Public Service Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2004, which this Bill is amending, means the cohort of public servants recruited between 1 April 2004 and 31 January 2012. These public servants have no requirement to retire on age grounds, as per section 3 of the 2004 Act. They can already stay to age 70 and beyond and the Government decided not to impose a retirement age on this group. That is the reason they are excluded from the definition of "relevant public servant" in this Bill. The Bill only affects public servants recruited prior to 1 April 2004, as this is the only cohort who must retire before the age of 70 years currently. Once this Bill is commenced, no public servant, other than the uniformed grades, will be required to retire before reaching the age of 70.

Some Deputies have raised the issue of mandatory retirement in the economy in general, in both the public and private sectors. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform only has responsibility for the terms and conditions of employees in the public service and is addressing the retirement age issue in that sector by way of this Bill. In the private sector, there is no statutory retirement age but compulsory retirement ages are generally established by individual employment contract or merely by custom and practice. That is entirely a matter between employers and employees, within the scope of equality and employment legislation. In 2017, the Workplace Relations Commission published a code of practice setting out best industrial relations practice in relation to retirements and requests for longer working. The guidelines arose from a recommendation of the report of the Interdepartmental Group on Fuller Working Lives, which was chaired by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. These guidelines, which are set out in Statutory Instrument No. 600 of 2017, may be of interest to Deputies and their constituents.

A number of Deputies have argued that the group of public servants that has engaged in the interim arrangements should be covered by the legislation. When the Government announced this policy change in December last, it was recognised that there would be a group of public servants that would lose out because of the time required to effect the change by primary legislation. Rather than excluding this group altogether, temporary arrangements were put in place to allow public servants who reached the age of 65 before the change in the law to remain at work until they reached the age of eligibility for the State pension. That addresses the problem whereby many public servants have to retire at 65 but do not qualify for the State pension until 66, which was the main driver which gave rise to the increase in the compulsory retirement age. In designing these arrangements, due consideration had to be given to the current statutory position, which is that these employees have a compulsory retirement age of 65. In that context, public servants retire and receive their lump sum and pension benefits at 65, but are given the option to continue working on a fixed-term, non-pensionable basis for one extra year.

I am sure Deputies will appreciate that there will always be a group of people who lose out on changes in the law due to timing. That is an unavoidable aspect of changes in policy and the interim arrangements were put in place to lessen the blow for those people. It is not possible to offer public servants who have reached the age of 65 and availed of the interim arrangements the exact same conditions as public servants who will not have reached the age of 65 until after the commencement of the Bill. If that were possible, there would be no need for this legislation. We can, however, debate this further on Committee Stage.

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