On foot of the launch of the Older and Bolder campaign this week to lobby for a national strategy for older people, Róisín Ingle meets four of its hard-living proponents
Meet the older, bolder Irish. One of them, a 73-year-old woman is travelling to Pakistan today to teach speech and drama to children. Another, an 83-year-old trade union veteran, is recovering his strength after a heart problem with a gentle return to the swimming pool.
There's the 70-year-old Dublin man who says that like many older people he is sometimes lonely but who laughs about the fact that getting older is "a queue nobody can get out of". And then there's the woman in her late 70s - you'd never guess it to look at her - who wouldn't miss her weekly t'ai chi class for anything.
While their lives are as diverse as the lives of teenagers, twentysomethings or the middle-aged in Irish society, these men and women have a couple of things in common.
The first is that they can all laugh about the vicissitudes of ageing.
The second is that they are all supporters of the Older and Bolder campaign, launched this week in a blaze of publicity, with an older people's choir blasting out a rousing version of When I'm 64.
The aim of the campaign is to lobby the Government to come up with a national strategy for older people.
Members of the five national older people's organisations want to highlight issues such as the need for an older person's ombudsman, employment equality for older people, an end to ageism and greater economic independence for the more senior members of the community.
"We are all ageing, we want to make this country a better place to be an older person," explains a spokesman. In celebration of the launch, we talk to four older people about ageism, ageing and, more importantly, living.
Tadhg Philpott (83)
Being older, says Cork man Tadhg Philpott, has its advantages. "The shackles of compulsory movement go off your shoulders; your time is your own and you are free to plan what you want to do."
Due to a recent heart problem, he hasn't been quite so active, but when in full health he swims regularly, teaches life-saving and keeps his hand in with the Senior Citizens Parliament, an organisation he helped set up. "There is always something to do. My wings were clipped a bit by illness but I'm getting there. I can walk miles on the flat but the hills are harder," he says.
A trade union man, he worked for the ITGWU and then in Siptu's retired members' section, also getting involved with ICTU's retired workers committee - the first organisation for retired workers. The oldest paid-up member of Cork Labour Party, he is passionate about issues affecting older people and gets irritated by how long change can take. "I'll give you just one example. We only recently got the peak-time restrictions on the buses lifted, but that is something we have been asking for this past 15 years. It shouldn't take that long for these things to happen."
Another issue he is concerned about is the old-age pension, which he says is not enough to keep older people from poverty. "Anyone in Ireland whose sole income is derived from social welfare is living just above the poverty line. This is not acceptable," he says.
"When people retire they get given a presentation of a watch, it's as though they are supposed to watch the clock until the day they die. My advice to older people, if they are not immobile, is to get out the door, go to community centres, play cards, play anything, just get involved in an activity and connect with people. It's amazing the difference it can make," he says.
"There used to be this idea in Ireland that older people should be seen and not heard," he continues. "Well, they are being seen and heard now thanks to the efforts of all these community organisations." Some things don't change. "I am 23 months older than my wife, she still won't obey me," he laughes.
Veronica Dunne (late 70s)
"The pension is terrible," says former opera star Veronica "Ronnie" Dunne, explaining part of the reason she continues to teach singing at the Leinster School of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin.
"Of course the other reason I keep working is that I love it, it's my life," she says.
She works every day from 10am to 6pm, and when not teaching is preparing lessons at home, listening to scores or picking out music that she thinks will suit her students.
She says the Older and Bolder campaign is "a wonderful idea", adding that older people are suffering from an image problem in this country.
"I have some friends and they won't go out. I see people my age walking around with their heads down," she says. She recommends older people do t'ai chi as she does once a week.
"The most important thing when you get older is your balance, so I go to t'ai chi, which is excellent for that," she says.
At her age, she can observe the arrogance of youth and laugh.
"I see sometimes in lessons that they are not listening to me. I think to myself: 'I've been there, I know where you are going. I sang internationally, I was a long time in Covent Garden with great conductors and great singers.' They look at you now and in their heads you just know they are thinking 'that oul' one!'. You have to laugh. If you haven't got a sense of humour about these things you may as well dig your grave," she says.
"I don't feel any older than I did 30 or 40 years ago. I still get down on the floor with my dogs. It's true what they say, it's a state of mind, life is for living," she says. "If you get asked to an event, I don't care if it's a dog fight, my advice is to go, because you won't be asked again. Go out, go to concerts, to the theatre, talk to people, be part of life."
She's realistic about the ageing process, though.
"Look, we all have to get old. It's part of life, if we all stayed on this Earth forever we'd be eating each other. Nobody should be afraid of death but while you are still around, feel lucky to be alive," she says.
Betty Noonan (73)
Betty Noonan doesn't mind admitting that travelling alone to Pakistan, which she will do today, is nerve-racking.
"Being on your own, you don't have someone to check things with. It's a bit disconcerting," she says. Originally from Cork, the 73-year-old once dreamt of the diplomatic life, and joined the external affairs department of the Civil Service at the age of 17. At 18, she contracted TB and had to return to Cork. Marriage not long afterwards meant being forced to leave the Civil Service and giving up her diplomatic dream.
She had four children in the early part of her marriage and then, in her 40s, two more. "So it was like two families really," she says. Her late husband worked for Eircom and in the 1970s was offered a post in Baghdad.
"I jumped at the chance," she says. "After all those years I was finally getting a chance to travel." In Baghdad she learnt Arabic, discovered Saddam Hussein "didn't pay anybody" and, on returning to Dublin, continued her studies in UCD, where she got involved in the dramatic society and completed a degree and a master's degree.
"So I came out waving these qualifications but realised at my age, 50 as I was then, there wasn't much I could do with them," she says. She's had a varied working life, though. Script-writing for RTÉ, teaching speech and drama, and writing short stories - the broadcast of one of her pieces of work on RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany recently was "a thrill". She has also just finished a novel with the working title Indian Summer, about an older couple's romance.
She enjoys life but is keen to highlight issues that make life harder for older people. "Uneven footpaths are a menace and they are bad all over the country," she says. "You have to walk with your head down all the time - not a good look - so you don't trip up. And then they wonder why the A&E units are full of older people," she says.
An even larger bugbear is how older people have to struggle for their rights. "I've a friend who is disabled and she has already been interviewed twice about getting the allowance, it's an extra €7 and she is being grilled relentlessly about it, which I don't think is right," she says.
Today's adventure is her third trip to Peshawar in Pakistan and this time she will be there, teaching speech, drama and poetry, for eight weeks. "If you are not learning, you are forgetting, that's my philosophy in life," says Noonan.
Patrick McCarthy (70)
It's quiet in the sheltered housing complex in Dublin's north inner city where Patrick McCarthy lives. There's the staff at the centre who deliver a cooked meal every day, and a garden, where in the summer he sits with his newspaper, chatting to passersby.
"I like the peace and quiet," he says. "I worked since I was 12 years of age. The peace and quiet is nice."
McCarthy, a widower, retired a few years early from his work as a welder with Dublin Port when his hip started to give him trouble. He is on crutches now, but still gets around in his car.
He finds it hard to trust the Government - "all that corruption", and thinks taxing pensions is unfair.
"You work all your life paying tax and then you get your pension. When you get to 65 that should be the end of the tax, but it's not - you still get taxed on your pension. It shouldn't be like that," he says.
He gets up at 6am usually, makes a cup of tea, and then "I let the day take care of itself". It does get lonely. "Of course it does when you've nobody to talk to, but I keep the television on," he says. "Let's face it, getting older is a queue nobody can get out of."
He looks forward to the weekly visits by the young woman from Care Local, the Dublin organisation that recruits volunteers who want to befriend older people living alone.
"She is great, she is on her honeymoon in Cuba now, so I am looking forward to hearing all about it when she gets back. I asked her to ask Fidel Castro if he had a spare cigar," he laughs. "I was a bit nervous the first time she came, but now we have our nice little chats and it sort of breaks up the day."
He is not looking forward to the winter coming in, the dark evenings and the bad weather, but apart from that, he says, "I'm just contented here. I don't have any worries."
"But there are older people in this country who are struggling," he adds. "They don't know where the next loaf of bread is coming from. That can't be right."