The gathering voices within Government on issues relating to older people will be welcomed by the grey lobby which groups such as Age Action Ireland has been fighting for what the National Council on Ageing and Older People calls an age-friendly society.
Because of the disclosures relating to Leas Cross nursing home and the illegal withholding by the State of pensions for public beds, much of the debate surrounding the elderly has been directed to long-stay care, although only about 5 per cent of older people utilise such facilities.
Nursing homes, therefore, should be regarded as just one sector in the package available to older people in their frailer years. But there is much else that can enhance life, adequate pensions being pivotal as older people are often at great risk of poverty. As the OECD has highlighted, Irish pensions - as a proportion of final earnings - are among the lowest in the developed world. Seámus Brennan, Minister for Social and Family Affairs, and his Cabinet must focus on this issue.
In the meantime, however, he has floated some apposite ideas to help make older people's lives more comfortable and enriching. People on the means tested Old Age Non-Contributory Pension (a name which hopefully will be changed soon), might be able to continue working without the ludicrous stipulation that to qualify for a full payment, they cannot earn more than €7.60 a week. The implementation of this idea would be welcomed by many of the 85,000 such pensioners.
Mr Brennan is on interesting, although trickier, ground with his proposal that older people should be enabled to remortgage a percentage of the value of their homes to the State. This would give them an income flow to boost their pensions and the State could recoup the money when the home was eventually sold. Many older people may want to realise some of their home's asset value, but all forms of mortgage or equity release, State or commercial, should be approached cautiously with rigorous scrutiny of interest rates and other conditions.
Elderly people should be afforded myriad choices in housing, as in all aspects of their lives. Some may favour the home in which they have spent most of their years, others a sheltered complex, a retirement village or even a "granny flat". Some may see merit in Age Action's suggestion that older people swap houses with the usually smaller homes of their adult children. Whatever older people think of Mr Brennan's proposals, they will surely be pleased if at least one of them, even the proposal to extend the free travel scheme, is implemented before Positive Ageing Week next September.