An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-01 ============================================================ Mike Kennelly (FG), Labour Panel I ask the Minister for housing and local government to amend regulations governing the retirement age for firefighters to allow those who remain medically and physically fit to continue serving until the State pension age of 66. Approximately 3,300 firefighters are serving in Ireland with more than 2,000 serving as retained firefighters. They staff the vast majority of our 217 fire stations and are the backbone of the fire service in rural and regional Ireland. They respond to fires, road traffic collisions, flooding and other emergencies while balancing their role with work and family commitments. They provide an invaluable front-line service to communities across the country. Under the current regulations, retained firefighters can remain in service beyond the age of 55 if they pass annual medical and fitness assessments but must retire at 62. That means many are forced to leave up to four years before they qualify for the State pension. The Government acknowledged recruitment and retention challenges when it increased the retirement age from 60 to 62 in 2024. However, those challenges remain. Fire services, particularly in rural Ireland, continue to struggle to recruit and retain personnel. Requiring experienced firefighters to retire at 62 only makes that situation worse. This proposal is not about lowering standards. Those wishing to remain in service already undergo annual medical and fitness assessments and can only continue with the approval of their employing fire authorities, which are the local authorities. The safeguards are already in place. The proposal simply extends the existing fitness-based approach to the State pension age of 66. There is also a clear issue of fairness. Retained firefighters can be required to retire up to four years before they qualify for the State pension despite being fit, capable and willing to continue serving. That gap has to be addressed. There is real urgency. Firefighters approaching their 62nd birthday in the coming weeks and months face compulsory retirement under the current regulations. If the Government intends to make this change, it must act now. I ask the Minister to introduce an immediate pause or freeze on compulsory retirements at the age of 62 while the necessary regulatory changes are progressed. It would be deeply unfair if experienced firefighters were forced to retire only for the rules to change shortly afterwards. This is a sensible and practical reform. It will help to retain experienced firefighters, strengthen emergency response, support rural fire services and align retirement with the State pension age, while maintaining the high standards of safety through annual medical and fitness assessments. I ask the Minister for housing to come to the Seanad to debate amending the regulations to allow retained firefighters to serve until the age of 66, where they continue to meet the required medical and fitness standards, and to introduce an immediate freeze to that no firefighter is disadvantaged while this change is considered. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:08+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-01