RITE AND REASON: Why should there be retirement at 65? Why should there be an upper age limit for membership of State boards and barriers for older people seeking car and travel insurance? asks Paul Murray
You know the story. The elderly man moans that they will not employ him. "Just because I am 85 they think I cannot do the job," he says. We laugh, perhaps. But we forget the pain, the leaden feeling, the narrowing eyes and nods from the interview board.
This is one discrimination highlighted so well recently by the Equality Authority. But there are others, reinforcing the authority's belief that ageism is endemic and that "strong negative stereotypes of older people persist".
We forget, of course, that when we legislate to discommode older people, however unintentionally, we are targeting everyone, because we all get old. So the difficulties faced by older people today - nearly 25 per cent of us are over 50, 14 per cent over 65 - will be around for the children of the 1990s, unless something is done to reform legislation and, most important, to eradicate attitudes which use chronological age as a measure of intelligence and ability.
It is suggested that we revere age, that we respect its wisdom, defer to its experience. Most older people, however, would be content with a fair deal - with laws, for example, that didn't discriminate against them in the workplace.
Yet for some reason the Employment Equality Act does not apply to people over 65. Why? Because there is an idea around that we should duck out at 65. Why? Indeed, the more you ask why, the more ridiculous job law ageism becomes.
Why don't we have a "decade of retirement", an assumed period in which people change not so much their jobs as their overall lifestyle, moving perhaps to less onerous duties, to another employer, or even to daily golf. But by choice, and at a time which suits them, unlike the nearly two million older US people who have returned to work because of their declining investments.
Why should there be an upper limit for membership of State boards? And so many barriers for older people seeking car and travel insurance? Should a pensioner lose financially if he/she returns to work?
Maybe, of course, we are missing the spiritual dimension, the "reward in Heaven" mindset which regards ageing as a process, a time of weakening bladders and hearts which has to be endured. A time when, as the pearly gates approach, we should step back and contemplate the Almighty.
We have a prayer in my house. It goes like this:
Lord help me to remember that life is just a journey
On the way to Heaven,
That we have here no abiding city,
What God has given God can take away,
And the axe head is at the foot of the tree.
This expresses well that we are just passing through. No one said, that this journey should be blighted by attitudes which regard older people as a grey amorphous mass.
"Don't forget us just because we have been around longer," was the sad headline on a recent UK older persons' magazine, reflecting that our later years can be sad. Indeed, Paul Baltes, a German academic, has been bewailing the constant romanticising of older age.
But there can be much to celebrate: mortgage paid, children reared, free travel, gardening, political/social involvement, even the rekindling of a marriage. In other words, older people come in many categories. They want to be treated as individuals, not as hospital "bed blockers" to be shunted off to dreary nursing homes.
They want recognition of their rights to privacy, to intimacy, to make choices and, as the Equality Authority stressed, to be consulted. They want to see government imagination in helping them adjust to life's changes.
Why not housing units which can be adapted to different generations, housing projects mixed with young and old?
They need more respite care, better carers' allowances, encouragement to work and study, exercise sessions to reduce falls, and more recognition for the disabled aged, those for example who have had polio.
An endless list maybe, but one which cannot be ignored. UN secretary general Kofi Annan said recently that by the year 2050 the number of older people would have increased from 600 million to two billion. Paraphrasing the Beatles, he said he trusted that people would be fed and loved when they were 64.
Trust, however, will not be enough. The appointment of Ivor Callely as Minister of State for services for older people is a gesture and October 1st next is National Age Discrimination Day.
It might be an appropriate time, too, for the churches to examine their consciences on ageism. The combined weight of the sacred and the secular might then start to address an issue which for Mr Annan is the 21st century's dominant theme.
Paul Murray is head of publishing and information at Age Action Ireland. Its website. www.ageaction.ie was launched this month. He is also a member of the Unitarian congregation in Dublin.