Older citizens should be utilised, not ignored

Ireland, like other Western societies, suffers from a severe prejudice in the form of ageism.

This bias does not get the same attention as other groups defined by race or social class, but is it equally pernicious and requires a change in attitude from top to bottom.

Ageism pops up in a variety of ways.

Advertising is almost universally preoccupied with young, healthy people with perfect teeth and clear eyes.

The not-so-subliminal message is that these types are worthy of the products being advertised. Having wrinkles or bad teeth does not fit the bill.

Some media targets younger cohorts too, driven partly by the commercial reality that younger people form the bulk of spending consumers.

However, this combination of advertising and media coverage being centred on a specific cohort of society by definition leaves out others, of which the aged are the most notable.

Why do we ignore the elderly with such ease? These are the people who created the next generation and in general worked to produce the tax revenues over decades that sustained our country, as well as keeping their families safe.

Yet, it seems that when you hit a tipping point in years, your relevance to the country’s culture starts to wane. Are we missing a trick in how we exploit the knowledge and abilities ingrained in these people?

We saw the power of older people when they rose up against planned changes in medical card qualification. It struck me that such energy would be better channelled in to a positive force tasked with helping our economically crippled country to recover.

Think about what older people can do to assist Ireland in years of need ahead:

* 1: They provide virtual childcare services for many of their grandchildren which is not recognised by the Government.

* 2: They give numerous hours working voluntarily for charities.

* 3: They are guardians of neighbourhoods by virtue of their physical presence during the day.

* 4: They are important consumers of goods and services, including during periods when those in full-time work with schoolgoing children cannot avail of such products, particularly in the tourism sector.

It’s worth noting that these older types are hanging around due to advances in healthcare. Some present this as a weight on society but I see it as a net positive. It keeps a lot more potentially active citizens above the ground and instead of seeing them as a drag on the rest of us we should imagine something different.

Maybe its the weather or something more corrosive but in the Mediterranean it seems older people are more fully incorporated in to everyday life than in Ireland.

They seem more visible in restaurants, for example, as part of families or often on their own. Here, it feels like they are not as visible and I suspect that is because the rest of us find it too easy to live our daily lives without building a social fabric that more fully celebrates and encourages the existence of a group who have more combined wisdom than all of those models who adorn the billboards around us.

A debate is building across Western media about how debt-burdened economies can meet their liabilities. You can detect an argument that suggests more taxes are needed on the elderly as they tend to be debt free and are not directly raising costly children. That, to me, is a narrow-minded and nasty point of view mired in ageism and one worth rallying against.

Instead of seeing older people as an easy source of extra taxes we should treat them as assets that could be even better employed to support communities. There are moral and economic reasons to see it that way, so our politicians better wake up to the battle ahead.