A major new research project on older workers has called for the scrapping of forced retirement.
The EU-funded report, released yesterday by a partnership of State, union and training bodies, says that many Irish workers should be able to work into their late 60s and 70s for personal and financial reasons.
The report was released at a conference at Dublin's Mansion House yesterday, with older workers saying they found it difficult to rejoin the workforce after forced retirement or redundancy.
One 64-year-old former chief executive of a major firm with an annual turnover of €250 million described to the meeting how he had recently applied for seven jobs without success.
Some older people want to keep going because they enjoy working, while others need to because their pension is inadequate, said Robin Webster, chief executive of Age Action.
Some older people want to stay in employment because of the loneliness of staying at home all day, says the report by Senior Select Retain and Retrain, a partnership of Age Action, Fás, Ictu, Partas and Contact Recruitment.
Work was a vital part of boosting the self-esteem of these people, it was found.
Ireland has no compulsory age at which workers must retire, but most employers force staff to stop working at 60 or 65. The EU is trying to push up the retirement age for workers in response to an ageing population.
A retirement age is either stated in contracts or part of custom and practice at a place of employment.
Most employers are not even aware that they can offer fixed-term contracts to people older than 65, the report said.
This abandonment of older workers must end, says the key finding of the two-year research project.
"Compulsory retirement ages, whether in the public service or not, should be removed," say the report's authors.
A survey commissioned by the authors found that employers were often reluctant to hire older people, even though older workers were seen to be more reliable in terms of sick leave, flexibility and teamwork. But they were seen as less technically adept, the report said.
Many older staff want to keep working, said Age Action chief executive Robin Webster.
"Being replaced if you don't perform properly is one thing, but it's hard to believe that somebody who is doing a good job could be turfed out when they hit 65," said Mr Webster.
Removing from a contract any mention of a compulsory retirement age would not go far enough, said Mr Webster.
"If the Government said that you can no longer have age details in the contract, you still have custom and practice, which in many cases are based on pension schemes. We're saying this is very, very inflexible."
Mr Webster said that there was also a need for more flexible approaches to employing older people.
"Many of them don't want to quit, but they don't want to work five days in high-pressure jobs."