In this week’s Public Policy Bulletin, read about the removal of the mandatory retirement age in Ireland, Google’s recently released Irish SME report, CSO’s 2021 personal and work life balance statistics and the new Atlantic Technological University. We also cover the release of the most recent Quarterly Bulletin from the Central Bank and NISRA’s Composite Economic Index for Q4 2021.
Abolition of Mandatory Retirement Age reaches Dáil Second Stage
The Employment Equality (Abolition of Mandatory Retirement Age) Bill 2022, currently in Dáil Second Stage, seeks to abolish the mandatory retirement age. Irish law currently allows mandatory retirement ages to be set by employers in employee contracts. This Bill would provide an individual with the choice to continue working beyond the age of 65, if they wish to do so.
Exceptions are provided in the Bill for An Garda Síochána, the Defence Forces, fire services or security-related employment prescribed by the Minister for Justice and Equality and/or the Minister for Defence. The Bill also states that it shall not be unlawful for an employer to provide financial incentives for the voluntary retirement of an employee at a particular age.
Chartered Accountant Ireland advocated for the abolishment of mandatory retirement age to afford workers the choice to work or retire as long as they desire to in our response to the public consultation on sustainable State Pensions into the future.
Details of the Bill can be found here.
Google releases report on digital capabilities in Irish SMEs
Google commissioned Amárach to survey 1,000 Irish SMEs in December 2021 to develop a report on their digital journey. The report provides a comprehensive picture of the landscape directly from a cross-section of SME leaders and concludes that ambitious investment in digital skills could result in Ireland’s GDP in 2025 being €9.5 billion higher (€544.2 billion) than currently forecast.
The report makes reference to the Government’s digital strategy, which Chartered Accountants Ireland recently responded to by public consultation, and states that its implementation, coupled with the ambition of SMEs, can ensure Ireland is on the right path to achieve its digital targets.
In three years, the majority of SMEs expect to be at least halfway on their digital journey. In realising their digital potential, 28 percent of SMEs believe they could increase wages and salaries and 30 percent of all exporters say they could export more. The report concludes that these advances would cause an additional annual increase in Ireland’s GDP of 0.5 percent.
The full report can be read here.
CSO releases 2021 Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey
A recently released survey from the Central Statistics Office tells us that 22 percent of workers did not take any annual leave in 2021 and “being short staffed” was identified as the most common barrier.
Only 8 percent of part-time employees working in small organisations of less than 20 people took paid sick leave in 2021, compared to 16 percent for full-time employees. While over 20 percent of workers at an overall level took paid sick leave, only 6 percent of workers took sick leave without pay in the same period. 20 percent of lone-parent workers took unpaid sick leave, compared with 6 percent of workers of families with two adults with dependent children.
Employees in the financial sector availed most of flexible hours, with 32 percent availing of some flexible working arrangement in the previous 12 months.
New Atlantic Technological University opened by Minister Harris
This week, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris, opened the new Atlantic Technological University (ATU).
Atlantic TU sees the dissolution of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Sligo, and Letterkenny Institute of Technology. These institutions will merge to become ATU.
Read more here.
Central Bank releases Quarterly Bulletin
The most recent Quarterly Bulletin from the Central Bank indicated that economic growth would continue to grow, but at a slower rate than previously forecast. The revised annual growth rates are 4.8 percent in 2022, 4.3 percent in 2023 and 3.9 percent in 2024.
Consumer price inflation is predicted to average 6.5 percent this year, driven by particularly high energy price inflation. This is expected to reduce to 2.8 percent in 2023 and 2.1 percent in 2024.
Read the Central Bank’s press release here.
NISRA releases Q4 2021 NI Composite Economic Index
Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency recently released its final 2021 quarterly measure of the performance of Northern Ireland’s economy report.
Quarter 4 of 2021 saw an increase in economic output of 1.2 percent, bringing the increase over the year to 4.9 percent.
The level of economic activity in Northern Ireland continued the general upward trend from the series low in Quarter 2 2020, reaching a thirteen-year series high in Quarter 4 2021 and achieving a level last exceeded in Quarter 2 2008.
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