When it comes to pensions, it’s hard to get away from figures. And so it is with the latest tome – the Report of the Interdepartmental Group on Fuller Working Lives.

“Fuller working lives” in this case is synonymous with longer working lives. And, with Government having pushed out the age at which the State will start paying pensions, that’s exactly the reality that faces Ireland’s workforce and employers.

Already, since 2014, the pension age has been raised to 66. That will climb further in 2021, to 67, and then to 68 in 2028. It’s not a stretch to suggest that, by that time, the prospect of retirement at 70 will loom on the horizon. Public expenditure and reform Minister Paschal Donohoe made a point yesterday of noting how changes to public service employment rules in 2013 already allow staff employed there since then to keep working until they are 70.

The problem is that, in the private sector especially, few employers have yet adjusted to the new reality – despite Ibec saying to the report’s authors that feedback from those employers who had kept workers on beyond the age of 65 had been positive.

As a result, workers are being shown the door on their 65th birthday. And, with just 40 per cent of private sector workers having any private occupational pension by the report’s estimation, they are relying on the State pension to pay their bills.

Now they must wait, and most are being forced to register for Jobseeker’s Benefit for the 12 months before their State pension kicks in just to survive financially.

That position will be exacerbated in five years’ time so getting workers and their employers to adjust to a new normal is timely. According to the report, just 3.2 per cent of the Irish workforce was aged 65 or older in 2015 after the new rules had kicked in. That must change.

The report speaks of guidance, reviews, codes of practice and developing courses to reskill older workers. It tiptoes around the issue of intergenerational fairness. Fears that accommodating older workers necessarily means shutting the door to young people have been debunked in recent times, as have assumptions about the serenity of retirement.

Without change to the “normal” age retirement, poverty beckons for many. The clock is ticking.