Mary White (Fianna Fail)

——are on a mission to help future generations. It would be very easy to abolish the retirement age of 65. Politicians do not have to retire. Senators and TDs are not bound by this law. That is a contradiction. It would be a dramatic move to abolish the retirement age. The bottom line is that 71% of people over the age of 50 voted in the previous general election. As a business person I see in that a niche, an opportunity. I am not being cynical. They are interested enough to vote.

There is a down side. Many groups represent older people but, unfortunately, they are fragmented. Older people are not a political lobby because the groups are fragmented. They have not made their presence felt, and they are the people on whose backs the Celtic tiger was built.