Increasing the retirement age for Irish workers became a major campaign issue during the 2020 general election – and so severe was the backlash that no political party has dared to suggest nudging it upwards since.
This has been the case despite the fact that the primary factor that has made meeting pension obligations such a thorny issue – collapsing birth rates – has not remotely improved, and in fact has worsened. The Irish fertility rate has crashed further since 2020 to a calamitous 1.5 per woman, a situation that is almost never discussed and is certain to further worsen as so many of our young people are forced abroad by lack of housing and the cost of living crisis.
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