As they formulate a strategy for elderly care today, Ministers must remember that older people are not one grey amorphous mass: they are individuals with varying needs, writes Paul Murray.
When Tánaiste Mary Harney corrals her Cabinet colleagues today for a special meeting on the care of elderly people, she will be aware of a growing constituency that is beginning to demand the highest standards, applied both transparently and fairly. She will know, too, that there is a gathering view that older people should have their own ombudsman, and that any package will be scrutinised by the social partners.
For too long ageing issues have been immersed in nod and wink politics. "Sure, didn't we raise the pension by more than inflation" has been the constant refrain from generations of politicians.
Astonishingly, despite excellent reports from the National Council on Ageing and Older People and later the National Economic and Social Forum, few politicians have taken ageing and end-of-life issues seriously. The people who vote - older people - have been bypassed.
This is now changing. TDs - Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd, his party leader Enda Kenny, Fianna Fáil's Senator Mary White, and Labour deputy Breeda Moynihan Cronin, among others - have begun to focus on nursing homes. The focus has been on their sometimes scandalous conditions, low subventions, or the mess over the tenders to pay back money illegally pocketed from residents. The focus is narrow, but it is a start to a dialogue that emerged from RTÉ's Prime Time on Leas Cross nursing home, and the court case about Rostrevor Nursing Home in Dublin's Rathgar.
On pensions, too, there is now the beginning of a dialogue as the Government ponders whether it should risk forcing low-paid workers to take out occupational pension schemes, or whether it can make them sufficiently attractive. The dilemma, and the perennial worry, is that not much more than half the working population is in an occupational scheme, despite the efforts of the Pensions Board which has failed to entice sufficient workers into PRSAs.
The outlook could indeed look bleak for the near-quarter of the population who will be 65 plus by 2050, that is if we continue to have State pensions that are the lowest in the OECD as a percentage of gross average industrial earnings, and residential and community care that is often unplanned and/or under-resourced.
We need a long-term view that is based on the desire of older people for a framework of respect, one in which their needs will be comprehensively addressed.
Older people are not one grey amorphous mass: they are individuals with varying needs.
Some require constant care, but many have no health problems. Indeed, as more and more we encounter men as well as women in their 80s, we realise that longevity can bring opportunities. Good social policy should reflect this. It should focus on life-long learning. It is never too late to learn, even in the fourth age as we face the dying of the light. And as we advance in years there is no reason why we should not sing, dance, travel, seek election, work, paint, act and swim like any younger person.
Not every older person wants to travel around on a tour bus, and stop for endless cups of tea on the way to a Daniel O'Donnell concert! Ireland should become the best country in which to grow old. With a population which now has a 65-plus cohort of just less than 12 per cent there is an opportunity to create a society fit for elderly people which offers choice, opportunity, sufficient income (older people have the highest risk of poverty of all age groups) and superior latter day care services for those who need them.
The Tánaiste in her Cabinet deliberations today will no doubt focus mainly on some key issues, a major one being long-term care, both residential and the often doddering community care services.
Financing will be the crunch issue. Who should pay for what? Irish public spending on the care of elderly people is 0.67 per cent of GDP. The OECD average is 1 per cent, so we have some way to go, as the National Economic and Social Forum has said.
Ministers will also be aware of a major anomaly. This is that of the €1 billion spent on older people's services in 2004, more than half went on residential care, which only 5 per cent of older people utilise.
Priorities have become skewed, despite all the rhetoric over years that older people should be assisted to remain in their own homes as long as they wish.
At the very least, therefore, older people should be able to expect at least embryo agreement on at least three things at today's meeting:
* Enhanced support for family carers
* Increased and improved community care packages for older people at home
* Nationally standardised financial arrangements to pay for nursing home beds, both public and private, and involving the controversial use of house equity.
These need to be underpinned, however, by the creation of an Ombudsman for Older People. There also needs to be an extension of the remit of the Social Services Inspectorate not only to include residential care, both public and private, but also community care services for older people.
The establishment of an independent commission to prepare a long-term strategy to eliminate age discrimination, and promote positive ageing, would also go a long way towards bettering the life of all older people. It would help us to finally say goodbye to ageism, the last "ism".
Paul Murray is Head of Communications at Age Action Ireland (www.ageaction.ie)