{"id":500972,"date":"2026-06-29T11:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T11:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/500972\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T11:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T11:26:07","slug":"new-retirement-age-rights-for-employees-come-into-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/500972\/","title":{"rendered":"New retirement age rights for employees come into effect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New retirement age rights for employees have come into effect.<\/p>\n<p>The legislation allows eligible workers to choose to remain in employment beyond their contractual retirement age, where that age is below the State pension age of 66.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, thousands of employees are forced to retire at the traditional retirement age of 65, as stated in their employment contracts, one year before the State pension commences.<\/p>\n<p>These new rules will give workers the option to work for an additional year to bridge that gap but there will be no requirement to do so.<\/p>\n<p>The new rules do not apply to employees with a retirement age of 66 or higher, or if their retirement age is set by law such as An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na and the Defence Forces.<\/p>\n<p>The compulsory retirement age for most public and civil servants increased to 70 in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The new right will allow employees to formally notify their employer that they do not consent to retire at their contractual retirement age.<\/p>\n<p>To do so, they must provide at least three months&#8217; notice, and no more than 12 months&#8217; notice before the intended retirement date.<\/p>\n<p alt=\"New retirement age rights come into force today\" class=\"tpe\" data-description=\"Cathy Maguire SC, barrister specialising in employment law, on the new retirement age rights coming into force today.\" data-embed=\"rte-player\" data-id=\"22625088\" data-ot-category=\"C0004\" data-title=\"Cathy Maguire SC, barrister specialising in employment law, on the new retirement age rights coming into force today.\" id=\"22625088\">We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.<a class=\"blocked-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/business\/2026\/0629\/1580818-retirement-age\/javascript:void(0);\" onclick=\"OneTrust.ToggleInfoDisplay()\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Employers are required to carefully consider any notification and if they intend to enforce a retirement age, they must respond in writing within one month.<\/p>\n<p>They must also clearly set out the decision and ensure that it complies with the higher legal threshold set out in the legislation.<\/p>\n<p>Employers cannot require an employee to retire unless they can justify this decision.<\/p>\n<p>They must objectively and reasonably justify the retirement of the employee concerned by a legitimate aim and that the means of achieving that aim is appropriate and necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New retirement age rights for employees have come into effect. The legislation allows eligible workers to choose to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-500972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}