THE official retirement age is irrelevant for older European workers because, by the time they reach it, 75 per cent of them have left paid employment, says Age Action Ireland.
The trend deprives many workers of 10 or 15 vital years in which they could have been preparing financially for retirement, says Mr Robin Webster, director of Age Action Ireland. And, while many are out of the workforce under the guise of early retirement, this is often a euphemism for long term unemployment, he says.
"One way of avoiding poverty is to continue working", says Mr Webster, who adds that this is especially true of older women, whose opportunity to build up pensions may have been hampered by leaving the workforce to rear children.
"Older workers have experienced a steady fall in their employment rates over the past 20 years because of age discrimination, recession and unemployment", he says. "In effect, older workers have borne the brunt of the changes that have taken place in European labour markets."
An EU survey in 1993 showed that over 70 per cent of Irish people believed the government should introduce laws to try to end age discrimination. Such laws had already been passed in the USA, Canada and Australia. Mrs Webster criticised the EU, saying that, as an institution, it had many age barriers of its own.