​As the award of €50,000 for age discrimination last week by the WRC to former RTE Reporter, Valerie Cox, made the news headlines, employers are once again reminded that whilst there is no current direct statutory bar on having a workplace retirement age, it remains very easy to fall foul of current employment equality legislation in respect of dealing with employees who have reached "retirement age" or who are coming close to it. In a separate case published recently Solas were ordered to pay €20k to an employee for asking a discriminatory question during an interview....

The old cliche that any business is only as good as its people is certainly true but in practice recruitment activity is often carried out in an unstructured and haphazard manner. Spending time on effective and structured recruitment activities will ensure that employers have the right people in place in their business and do not have to spend unnecessary time and money dealing with the impact of poor recruitment decisions and lack of productivity....