Marie Moloney (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I commend Senators Power, Crown and Barrett on bringing forward this Bill, which has certainly opened the debate on retirement age in this country. Funnily enough, when I first entered the Seanad, one of the first debates concerned a social welfare Bill where we proposed to increase retirement age to 67 and 68 by 2028. At that time, the Opposition gave out yards and said it was terrible to do this to people. Today, we are on a different footing. After that debate, I had a cup of tea in the bar and a man approached me who told me he found the debate interesting. He asked me if I knew his age and I said I did not. He told me he was 66 that day and he did not want to retire. He was a correspondent with The Irish Times, Mr. Jimmy Walsh, and he certainly did not want to retire. He worked for a number of years after that. It is interesting that he said he did not want to retire.There are many people who do not want to retire so we are faced with people who do not want the retirement age for the State pension to go up but we want the retirement age for the public sector to go up. This Bill will have implications for the health sector as it cannot just stop. That would leave it open for other sectors of the public sector immediately, such as teachers and their expertise, gardaí and other people who do not wish to retire. We cannot say it will not have implications because it will, and there are implications for the economy also. I agree that it is one way of trying to keep the expertise of consultants in the workplace. As a medical doctor the Minister knows that the lifespan of the career of a person working in medicine is shorter than the careers of others. By the time medics leave college and by the time they have trained up to become consultants it can take years, so their career life is shorter than others. The expertise of consultants in particular, who have seen and learned over the years, results in a wealth of knowledge in looking after and caring for people to extend lives. This is evident in the fact that people are living much longer than before. The Minister, having qualified and then becoming the boss as the Minister for Health, must have had the fastest promotion in history. That was certainly some jump. He knows, however, how many years it took to get his training and where he wanted to be. The least one would expect is a certain length of time in which to practise.

Senator Cullinane made reference to pensions. The State pension transition has been abolished. This moved the goalposts for people from being able to retire at the age of 65 to the age of 66 and the goalposts will move again to the age of 68. I have raised this issue previously in the House; that for those people who had to retire at the age of 65, there would be a shortfall until their State pension age whereby they could only claim jobseeker’s benefit for nine months. Senator Cullinane may not be aware but the Minister, Deputy Burton, did take the issue on board and brought in a special arrangement whereby people who had to retire at the age of 65 can draw the jobseeker's benefit until they are 66. However, what will happen when we go to the retirement ages of 67 and 68? Will the jobseeker’s benefit be extended then? I advocate that all contracts requiring people to retire at the age of 65 be extended to the State pension age, even if this means approaching the private sector and asking it to extend the contracts. It is not fair to say to people, “You have to leave your job.” These are people who have worked all their lives and they may have a few bob saved, and those savings could cripple them when it comes to their second year of jobseeker’s allowance. At that stage it is going to be means-tested against them. There is a big hole in this issue that needs to be addressed. I understand it may not come under the health brief, I believe it is more relevant to the enterprise and employment brief, but it has come up today under the Minister for Health's Department. I believe that the Departments of social welfare and enterprise and employment should come together to address this issue as it is going to cause problems.

Self-employed people may have no option but to work longer than the age of 66. No-one is going to tell them they cannot work past 66. Smaller self-employed businesses may have hit hard times during the recession and resorted to drawing jobseeker’s allowance as they would not be eligible for benefit. For some strange reason, a person who is self-employed and who accesses jobseeker’s allowance will not get any credited contributions for that period of time. Credited contributions are invaluable to people when it comes to pension age. People who may not realise it now will suffer big time because of the lack of those credits. This also relates to women who were affected by the marriage bar who will be crucified when it comes to their pension. They had no choice, even when working in the public sector. They were forced out of their jobs simply because they got married. The only women exempted from that were teachers. We have an obligation to look after those women.