Job at sixty - proving difficult

Happens all the time, it means one of two things, neither of which is ageism, one they have people for the role already but its the CS so they must advertise (annoys me but it has to be done) or they got lots of people who are over qualified, had a list of 30 interviews and these were long filled before they got to you. They still review every application regardless so it seems unfair. I had it for jobs that I was, in my opinion, the ideal candidate for, as in they met me and wrote the job for me, and still was given the "due to a large number of applicants".

I see you mentioned concern about testing in the CS, alot of PS roles don't have this and are simply an interview, so don't get overly concerned about that. Always local authorities and departmental jobs coming up in admin roles, typically starting just above the 30k mark. In my current area, almost all of the admin team were hired in the last 10 years and all well above 50, so it isn't all ageism.

As others have said, strip out the CV to only keep relevant roles for each application. Your degrees and qualifications should be one liners each, your jobs should only have bullet points which add value to the role you are applying and so on. Took me awhile to learn this as I aged into a far longer CV. If this isn't done it just looks like you haven't really tailored your application.

Pension wise, as others have said, if you can, pay the contributions to top up your UK one, between that, the Irish one, and any private one you have, you will be OK. My father gets both plus one from Eagle Star and lives a comfortable retirement despite never being a high earner.