John Crown (Independent)

On a point of clarification, I am not opposed to retirement and I anticipate my own retirement enthusiastically when the appropriate time comes. However, I am opposed to mandatory age-based retirement which, in my view, makes no sense, either medically, economically or socially. The current arbitrary retirement age of 65 was decided upon in a jurisdiction - Germany in 1870 - where at the time the average age of death at that time was about 48 years of age and where the average person who lived as far as 65 years lived an average of one to two years longer than that. People are living vastly longer and are vastly healthier. As my colleague, Senator Cullinane has said, the option of retirement should be maintained as a worker's right. However, I do not agree with a mandate for people who are productive, who are working and contributing to society and paying tax, who do not want to stop work, who are in the whole of their health and who, at a time of unprecedented economic crisis, at a time when a terrible demographic shift is occurring as regards the ratio of workers to dependants, are being told they must become dependants. This is insane and irrational.

I extend my good wishes to the Minister of State. Our President and two of her Cabinet colleagues, if they worked in the health service, would be well retired at this stage and two others of her Cabinet colleagues will, if this Oireachtas runs its natural course, reach retirement age during the term of the current Oireachtas. This underlines how completely insane it is and to arbitrarily fix an age of retirement for people who have been appointed before and after 2004 makes no sense. I may be speaking out of turn but there is a need for legislation to abolish the principle of mandatory age-based retirement across the public service.