Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I have a great deal of sympathy with Senator Tuffy's point of view, as I indicated on Committee Stage. For the record, section 34(4) of the Employment Equality Act 1998, which represents the current law, provides that:

Without prejudice to subsection (3), it shall not constitute discrimination on the age ground to fix different ages for the retirement (whether voluntarily or compulsorily) of employees or any class or description of employees.

The framework employment directive does not require the removal of this provision and a consensus emerged during consultations that the issue goes beyond employment equality policy and has broad socio-economic and industrial relations implications, which is the difficulty we face in terms of taking action on the matter today.

Compulsory retirement ages are a feature of many types of employment set over time. In many cases, they have been arrived at after negotiation and collective bargaining. In the case of private sector employment, the removal of existing agreements or arrangements with respect to compulsory retirement age is a matter in the first instance for agreement among the social partners. With respect to public service employees, however, in line with his recent Budget Statement, the Minister for Finance recently published the Public Service Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2004, which includes provision to remove the compulsory retirement age for new entrants to the public service and will, I understand, be debated in the Seanad tonight.

The purpose of the new subsection 3(c), which this amendment would remove, is to allow an employee who wishes to continue in employment after normal retirement age to do so, in the event that the employer agrees, by allowing the employer to offer a fixed-term contract without fear of a case of discrimination on the age ground being taken by other employees. By replacing section 6(3) of the 1998 Act, the upper age limit of 65 years is removed in order that employees over the age of 65 years will have all the other protections from discrimination offered by this legislation.