Sir, - In his report on last weekend's GAA Congress (The Irish Times, April 10th) Sean Moran wrote that the GAA's supreme rule-making body was "disproportionately weighted towards the elderly and conservative", and that as a consequence, it was difficult for "progressive decisions to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority".
Implicit in this view is an attitude that is not only inaccurate and insupportable, but is also offensive to older people: the view that equates "old" with "conservative", and "young" with "progressive". This is a classic example of ageism, the kind of negative assumption about ageing that leads to older people being treated as a homogeneous group and not as individuals, which is their right. It is also an example of the kind of rigid and dismissive notion of ageing described so eloquently by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in a message delivered to mark last year's International Day of Older Persons: "Rigid and dismissive notions of "age" and "ageing" have no place in today's world. We need to recognise that the extended course of human life endows older people with invaluable knowledge, experience and wisdom - qualities that are worth harnessing, but which are instead all too often marginalised or allowed to lie dormant."
I hope that The Irish Times, in its future reporting of GAA and other matters, will recognise that many older people in Ireland still have much to contribute, not only to the GAA but to a myriad of other organisations of all kinds in terms of knowledge, experience and wisdom. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Michael Loftus, Chairman, National Council on Ageing and Older People, Clanwilliam Square, Dublin 2.