Raising the pension age will save less money than initially thought according to research conducted by the Department of Social Protection (DSP).

It has calculated that raising the pension age would save 21% less than earlier projections by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC), which the Government has been working off.

The current State retirement age of 66 was set to rise to 67 in 2021 and to 68 by 2028. But these targets were abandoned after the 2020 general election.

The IFAC had estimated that pension expenditure would go up by 5% of national income by 2050, and said that increasing the pension age would reduce this increase by 0.7 percentage points, or 16% of increased State pension costs.

But the DSP figures challenge this. In a briefing document to cabinet in 2020, it indicated that the savings made by increasing the pension age would be a lot less as previously thought.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that, after the age of 65, workers have 13 years of healthy life expectancy. Raising the pension age by two or three years would have an enormous impact in the lives of those who have retired.

Fórsa has repeatedly called for the pension age to remain at its current level. In its recent report on ‘The Irish State Post-Pandemic,’ the union recommended maintaining the qualifying age for the State pension at 66 and increasing expenditure on public pensions by up to 1% of gross national income.