Ireland: social partners call for adjustments to the pension reform

Retirement age defined in the labor contract.  “The simple reality is that neither employers nor employees are prepared for the situation now facing them from 2014” Brendan McGinty, IBEC representative, was recently warning.  “For those employers with challenges recruiting new staff, they may not see major problems with an extension to retirement ages but for most significant policy, HR and employment relations issues arise.”  For the social partners, the main problem comes from the fact that, in Ireland, retirement age is defined in the employment contract.  Generally speaking, it is 65.  Yet, according to the IBEC, up to 60 percent of employers have not yet considered their response to the planned increase in the State pension age as the contracts tying them to the workers says 65.  29 percent simply intend to retain the current contractual retirement age at which employment terminates.  “What do you answer to somebody who's left out of their job at age 65, and has a year or more to wait until they receive their pension? What do they do? What do they actually live on?” asked ITUC general secretary David Begg.  The government plans that these people will be entitled to unemployment benefits but the social partners point out that, to get them, they will be required to actively seek work.
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s a year or more to wait until they receive their pension? What do they do? What do they actually live on?” asked ITUC general secretary David Begg. The government plans that these people will be entitled to unemployment benefits but the social partners point out that, to get them, they will be required to actively seek work.

Legal risk. Employers are mostly afraid that unhappy employees terminated at 65 will massively sue them. Indeed, following an ECJ decision asking European countries whi

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