Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I am sympathetically disposed to this amendment. The case has been very compellingly put by Senator Tuffy who was ably supported by Senator Terry and Senator Quinn. Unfortunately, I cannot accept the amendment today for reasons I will explain. I would love to avail of Senator Quinn's invitation to make a little history. I read in The Sunday Times the article to which Senator Tuffy referred and found it excellent. I remember several years ago writing an article on the same subject for an even better Sunday newspaper.

The position is that section 34(4) of the Employment Equality Act 1998 provides that "without prejudice to subsection (3), it shall not constitute discrimination on age grounds to fix different ages for the retirement whether voluntarily or compulsorily of employees of any class or description of employees". While the framework employment directive does not require it, the question of removing this provision was raised during consultations with the social partners and relevant Departments. It was also raised in this House on Second Stage of this Bill. In the consultations, there was widespread recognition that the labour force was becoming older and that the participation of older workers should be facilitated. Nevertheless, a consensus emerged that the issue went beyond employment equality policy and had broad socio-economic and industrial relations implications.

Compulsory retirement ages are a feature of many types of employment in the public and private sectors. They have been established over time and, in many cases, after negotiation and collective bargaining. In the case of private sector employment, the removal of existing agreements or arrangements on compulsory retirement ages is a matter firstly for discussion among the social partners. We have agreed to enter discussions with the social partners on that very subject. In his recent Budget Statement, the Minister for Finance announced that he would bring forward legislation to remove the compulsory retirement age for new entrants to the public service. I expect that legislation to be published on Friday.

I agree with Senator Tuffy's point that paragraph (c) might be a little confusing. I have read it a second or third time. Up to now, if an employer had different categories of employee, and offered those working in a machine shop, for example, a contract taking them beyond the age of 66, at which age all the other employees would retire, people working in other parts of the enterprise could then have brought a case based on the equality legislation to say they should be offered a similar facility. The net effect of this paragraph is to prevent employees taking such action. It is to enable the employer to offer contracts beyond the age of 66 to the employees believed, for example, to be the most useful to the employer.