Can we enforce a contractual retirement age?

The Unfair Dismissals Acts 1977 to 2007 and the Employment Equality Acts 1998 to 2011 prohibit an employee taking action against his/her employer where the employer enforces a mandatory retirement age within its organisation. However, an employer’s ability to enforce a mandatory retirement age is constrained by recent European and Irish case law which provides that an employer must be able to show that legitimate objective grounds, applicable to the organisation, exist to justify the enforcement of a mandatory retirement age.

Case law provides that there must exist within the organisation an objective justification in that the enforcement of a mandatory retirement age must seek to achieve