The Workplace Relations Commission awarded John Hosey €15,000 after finding that Kostal Ireland Gmbh discriminated against him by retiring him at 65 without properly assessing his request to work for another year. The decision was dated 11 July 2025.
Hosey, a production operator at the company’s Mallow site, alleged that his dismissal and the refusal to let him continue working were age discrimination. Kostal relied on its collectively agreed retirement age and said it supported succession planning, workforce balance and intergenerational fairness.
The adjudicator accepted that Kostal had legitimate aims for a general retirement age, but found it had not individually assessed Hosey’s capability or properly considered a one-year extension, including on a fixed-term basis. Both complaints were upheld, but the second duplicated the first and attracted no separate award.