It's great to young in Ireland today - so great we are inundated with young people from many nations visiting the country to sample what we offer.
Dublin is a focal point for European youth culture. That's a good thing, but it has had a nasty side-effect. People who aren't young have been pushed aside.
An unacknowledged decision has been taken that people of a certain age just aren't relevant any more. It was not even a conscious decision; more a by-product of the changes the last decade has wrought here.
Liberal ideas and an erosion of the faith we had in traditionally solid institutions like the church, the government, and, more recently, the banks, have radically changed the reality in which we live.
There is a generation gap without precedent: the new generation, quite simply, does not live in the same country its parents and grandparents called home. In defining its context, the new generation has inadvertently devalued age.
Experience doesn't mother as much as it used to. You have less need for years of experience if you embark on your career with years of third-level education under your belt.
Our young people grew up with transformations happening all around them, and so they have never revered precedent - or the older people who carry precedents in their heads. "Management of Change" (the current ultimate management buzz-phrase of the 1990s) doesn't require input from experienced older people; indeed, it is widely assumed change-management may be hindered by older people. Older people, goes the thinking, are rigid, inflexible in changing times - they can't adjust.
Nonsense. The generation aged 55-plus has survived most change and shown most flexibility in the last 20 years or so.
Take marriage. Their sons and daughters have married, and have had those marriages fail, or they've had children outside of wedlock. So, when older people expected to be relaxing in their "golden years", performing the doting grandparent role, they found themselves having to help raise another generation. They're doing it, and well, all around Ireland.
The older people in our society have risen to the challenges they could never have anticipated, and survived unprecedented difficulties. They've got very little credit for the flexibility and openness they've shown, or the extra burdens many carry. But Ireland would have ground to a halt in the past quarter century without their energy and responsibility.
The late 20th century has produced one challenge that our older people cannot face alone and that is violent crime. The physical limitations age can put on people have made them relatively easy pickings for the junkie looking to fund the next fix. So many of our older people are now living in fear, scared to go out for fear of mugging and even more scared to stay at home because they know their homes are no longer fortresses.
The fear is damming up much of the potential within our older people. We must and can remove it.
It will mean support from government and business. What I'm proposing here is a series of practical measures that can be put in place without ruining Government spending plans - just stretching them a bit. And if Irish businesses have the vision and the ethical outlook to get involved, that stretch will be minimal.
Our older people need help with the cost of door and window locks, peepholes and lights. Even these small measures will increase their sense of security enormously. (This is being supported already by the Department of Social Welfare, which must be complimented and urged to do even more.)
But the system I have been impressed with, and which can solve a wide range of problems, is socially monitored alarm systems. The phrase is a little clunky but I think the idea makes tons of sense. By replacing the telephone with a specially modified version, older people can have a cheap and simple alarm system in place. On top of that, the phone can be used as a motion-sensor.
SHOULD an older person fall and be unable to reach the phone, after a certain period of inactivity the phone automatically calls a relative, neighbour or monitoring station.
If a break-in happens when the person is at home, they can press a button on the phone to get help. They will be talked to and reassured until the gardai arrive.
Or they could use a neck pendant. This kind of pendant might have prevented one recent death. Eddie Fitzmaurice, in the west, died many hours after an attack on him (from hypothermia). If he had a socially monitored alarm pendant, he could have called for help.
The system is designed around the idea of reassurance. It will not turn a home into Fort Knox, but it will make it a more secure place to live. It will remove the nagging fear without taking over someone's life.
At first blush, this emphasis on security at home may seem excessive, but it is a constant concern to the increasing number of middle-aged people with older relatives living alone. Their parent, aunt or uncle, wants to live independently but safely.
Indeed, the security of a roof over one's head is one of the most basic human needs. That is even more true of older people, who need the peace of mind offered by personal security.