That doesn't sound like a very good reason when you pair it with the fact that:
> Most of these people, however will start their pensions in a couple of years
Incredible oversight that will either lead to some potentially very serious consequences, or some very high consultancy costs.
Technical debt is also a huge issue indeed, since focus is always on delivering new features, because that allows leadership to move to new positions. Delivering stable maintainable code/infra isn't visible.
I have another example of their oversight: In my team there was a single developer who was not a contractor. He was competent and an autodidact. It took them over 6 months to find a way to increase his pay, which would still be less than €4k if I remember correctly. The rest of the team were contractors getting paid well over €100 an hour, which (all costs considered) is about 2-3x more expensive. He left before they were able to give him a raise and replaced him with another contractor. This happens there all the time, because of stupid rules that make getting raises really hard, people leave and sometimes even get rehired as contractors for twice the cost. Everyone knows it happens, but nobody does anything to change it.