The largest teachers' union has said it will fight any plans to increase the compulsory retirement age for public servants to 65.
Currently public servants, including teachers, can retire between 60 and 65 years on standard pension; but a new report on public sector pensions says there should be a single retirement age of 65.
The Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO), which has 26,000 members, said it would resist the recommendation, although it welcomed other suggestions in the final report from the Commission on Public Service Pensions.
The INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, a member of the commission, said it would make teaching less attractive because teachers would be forced to work for more years with little benefit to their pensions.
"The current standard retirement ages of 60 to 65 years are not out of line with those applying in the private sector or the public services of other countries," Mr O'Toole says in his reservation at the end of the report.
He is joined by two other trade unionists, Ms Rosheen Callender of SIPTU and Mr Dan Murphy of the public service executive union.
Mr O'Toole said if the retirement age was changed it should only be done by providing incentives for staff to stay in employment.
"Teachers and other public servants should be able to accrue more than 40 years' service for pension purposes. This would achieve the purpose of encouraging staff to stay in service without imposing a new and higher retirement age on a compulsory basis for all," said Mr O'Toole.
In a separate development, Mr Paddy Healy, candidate for the vice-presidency of the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI), has strongly criticised the pay increases recommended in the Buckley report and how they have been presented.
"Government and ICTU spokespeople are suggesting the recommendations of the Buckley report are a first application of benchmarking. This is seriously misleading," he said.
"The abolition of cross-sectoral relativities within the public service is central to benchmarking public service grades with the private sector.
"Otherwise it would not be possible to benchmark totally different occupations separately with comparable groups in the private sector. Teacher relativities with Civil Service grades are therefore removed under benchmarking," he said.
"The Buckley report on the other hand establishes a new cross-sectoral relativity within the public sector between politicians and principal officers in the Civil Service, the very opposite of the task of the benchmarking body," he added.
The general secretary of the TUI, Mr Jim Dorney, said his union would get a "very substantial" increase in the benchmarking process. The Buckley report had given a fresh impetus to his union's demands.