The State must be responsible for the dignity of its citizens

I KNOW George Hook enough to know that my original impression of him was wrong.

Like most people, I came to know him through his bluff and colourful performances as a rugby analyst, and especially through his frequent denunciations of the Munster team (which, as everyone knows, is simply the best rugby team on the face of the earth). Later, I listened occasionally as he learned his trade as a current affairs commentator on radio.

I wasn't, as you might gather, impressed. Little by little, though, it became clear that he was trying very hard to learn, and he developed the radio programme into an indispensable part of the day. And, as I got to know him personally a little through some direct experiences, I became aware that he was, and is, a decent and compassionate human being, as honest and accessible a man as you would wish to meet.

I also became aware that George Hook had neglected his parents, and especially his mother, to the point of abuse. Indeed at one time he hatched a plot to rob his mother of her few remaining possessions, though happily he didn't go through with it. I know that about him because he recounts it, in painful detail, in his searingly honest book.

George Hook is not in a position to pass judgement on anyone in respect of what is now becoming known as "elder abuse." He knows that, and I've heard him say it on his radio show. Actually, none of us is. Even when we know the facts and we don't by any means know all the facts about the tragic case of Evelyn Joel, for instance very few of us is qualified to pass judgement on the people and the circumstances.

I've known people who grew old very happily. But I've also known people who became more and more difficult and hard to deal with as they grew older. Ageing is a natural process, one that we all have to go through. But it is also a process that is associated with loss bereavement, for example, is a feature of the ageing process. So, often, is the loss of property, of income, of independence. All of these losses on their own, and the combination of them, can have a devastating effect on people, and on their relationships with loved ones.

I've known people, too, who cared deeply for their elderly relatives, but were quite unable to cope with them. And I've known people who went through the motions of caring, because that was what was expected, but were able to invest little real feeling. I've come to the conclusion over the years that until you're faced with the care and protection of an elderly relative, you can't possibly predict how you will react. It's too easy to assume, about any given set of circumstances, that there was cruelty, abuse or neglect involved. Maybe there was, and maybe there wasn't. Maybe when all these circumstances are investigated it will be discovered that there was nothing more than incompetence, an inability to cope with a frightening and isolating situation.

But doesn't that thought throw up a big question? Why would it ever happen that people are left to cope alone with situations they have never faced before and that they have no way of understanding? In a civilised country, oughtn't it to be possible, in a time of loss, to make one guarantee to older people, the guarantee that they will always be entitled to dignity? If citizenship of a republic entitles you to nothing else, ought it not at least entitle you to that? Over the Christmas holidays (while Vincent Browne was away and Dave O'Connell was standing in for him) I was a guest on the Tonight programme, and in the course of a discussion on public spending I said there was a crisis waiting to happen in relation to services for older people. On the basis of both experience and observation I have come to realise that there are a great many older people in situations of high dependency in various residential settings and facilities, and many of those facilities are basically unable to cope with the levels of dependence they are encountering. That means that there are people, a lot of them, at risk, and that is a form of abuse too.

WHO is responsible? Where the care of elderly people is concerned that's a complex question. I hope some day, when I'm even more decrepit than I am now, that my children will feel some sense of responsibility for me. But I don't want them, and I don't believe they should have to, care for me on their own. As someone who has been a PAYE worker all my life, I have no hesitation in saying that the State should have some responsibility for me when I get older.

The bottom line, in my view, is that the State must be responsible for the dignity of its citizens. And where elderly people are concerned, we're a million miles from that. In November last the Government published a fairly detailed report on the subject of Elder Abuse called "Protecting our Future." There is one telling sentence in the foreword to that report, and it fairly sums up where we are: "While we set out wanting (but not able) to place the response to elder abuse in the context of an adequate system of services for older people and have found that this is indeed where it should be, such a system does not currently exist."

That's an official finding, not mine. There is no adequate system of services for older people, no system capable of protecting them from abuse, let alone guaranteeing the right to grow old in dignity.

And it wouldn't cost a lot. In its giveaway budget last December the Government set aside 150 million for new services for older people. The money is intended to cover a range of different services home care support packages, home helps, meals on wheels, day and respite care, palliative care, sheltered housing, and others. Many of these services are ones that have been systematically run down over the past few years, and money being put in now will bring them back to a reasonable standard.

I've never understood, for example, why the home help service has been so poorly treated. Year after years, whenever savings have to be made, the hours available for home help have been cut. And yet, apart from the invaluable assistance that home helps provide to elderly people, they are almost a walking guarantee of independence and dignity. A daily visit by someone who is in a position to report any signs of neglect or abuse would be the best possible way of ensuring that, and the modest cost involved would be more than offset by the savings made in enabling people to live safely in the community for longer.

In the wake of Evelyn Joel's death, we will get some action now. And if that poor woman's death, whatever its cause, has finally woken us all up, the tragedy of her death will leave a powerful legacy behind.