A major conference on rights and entitlements of older people was opened this morning at Croke Park by Minister for Health Mary Harney.
The conference forms part of Age Action Ireland's Positive Ageing week, which began last Wednesday.
Other speakers at today's seminar in Croke Park include Equality Authority chief executive Niall Crowley, Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly, and Human Rights Commission president Maurice Manning.
The aim of the conference is to debate what rights and entitlements older people should have in Ireland and to identify the issues and main priorities for action to improve their lives.
Ms O'Reilly told the conference civil servants have a thoughtless, insensitive and penny-pinching attitude towards providing services for older people.
Ms O'Reilly said she is constantly baffled by the bureaucracy involved in getting a chairlift, an accessible shower or even incontinence pads.
"Time and again I am baffled when I come across an action by a thoughtless, insensitive bureaucracy as it seeks to deal with an issue concerning an older person," she said.
"It could be a failure to provide as quickly as possible a chairlift in a house, or an accessible shower, it could be a penny-pinching attitude to the provision of incontinence pads to a person in a nursing home.
It could be the failure to use humane discretion in relation to nursing home subventions, or simply to make allowances for the fact that a little more time and trouble needs to be taken to deal with someone who isn't as young as they used to be," she said.
IHRC president Dr Maurice Manning claimed at the conference that some of the worst abuses of human rights in Ireland can be found in nursing homes.
Speaking about a report he commissioned on the issue in 2001, he said: "It was a fine and a frightening piece of work which made most of the points which were subsequently effectively and dramatically made in the Prime Time programme on Leas Cross.
"For us the report revealed a series of serious human rights breaches. We published the report. Not surprisingly there was little media reaction and the response from the Department of Health was, I'm sorry to say, perfunctory and dismissive.
"It gave us no pleasure when the Leas Cross programme dominated public interest to point out that we had warned the Department and the public quite some time earlier of the situation, of the defects in current practice and of what needed to be done. It may well be that it's a warning that needs to be made on a regular basis."
Equality Authority chief executive Niall Crowley said allegations of age discrimination in the workplace currently accounted for 23 per cent of their case files and all involved older people, he said. He argued that ageism was deeply embedded in Irish people's attitudes.
"So much of what we think and believe, say and do, gives credence to the myth that chronological age determines our ability, personality, ambitions and capacities. Significant cultural change is required if we are to break with these myths," he said.
Age Action Ireland chief executive Robin Webster urged the Government to bring forward legislation to secure the right of all older people to comprehensive, high quality services to ensure that they could live at home for as long as they wished. Without such legislation, he warned, it was inevitable that poor or inadequate services would be provided.
Positive Ageing Week will see some 300 activities staged throughout the country, including coffee mornings and table quizzes, outings, art exhibitions, cabarets, dance workshops and music sessions.
"The aim of Positive Ageing Week is to dispel any negativity around ageing by emphasising the positive aspects that ageing holds for older people and their carers in this country," said Eamon Timmins of Age Action Ireland.
An ecumenical service was held at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin yesterday. The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, the most Reverend Dr John Neill, delivered the address at the Service, which was attended by representatives of the Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches.