Mayo candidate calls for pension age to be restored to 65

A MAYO election candidate has called for the pension age to be restored to 65.

Joe Daly of People Before Profit stated: "Next year the age at which a person qualifies for a state pension will increase to 67.

"This will be one of the highest retirement ages in the developed world according to a study by the Finnish Centre for Pensions which indicates that Ireland ranks 8th out of 36 countries for the highest pension age.

“For manual workers this cruel decision means that old age can mean either poverty or heavy, backbreaking work.

"But the political establishment aren’t stopping there. By 2028, they want to raise the retirement age to 68, making it the oldest in the world.

“They have also made provision for further rises beyond that as they can review the life expectancy figures every five years and can increase the retirement age further if it increases.

"We often hear right wing parties refer to a ‘pensions timebomb’ to justify this policy but this is a piece of jargon which aims to hide the fact that workers are far more productive today than they were twenty years ago.

"Any increase in age dependency is more than compensated by the amount of goods and services each modern worker produces.

"On top of that, Ireland has the youngest population in Europe with one third of its population under 25.

"The only reason why the pension age is being increased is to put an extra financial burden on workers to let the banks, vultures, corporations and super rich go tax free.

"Each year’s increase in the pension age costs a worker €12,911 a year. So, next year, the Irish state will save €25,822 for every worker in the country.

"This is a shocking robbery and must be stopped.

"We are seeing people who recently retired going back to work to bridge the gap in their pensions, we think this is a terrible betrayal of people by the Fine Gael led government but Fianna Fáil have allowed it to happen without a whimper of protest.

"If elected to the Dáil I would fight to have this decision reversed.”