Living to be 100 - We still have a chance to avert crisis

DANISH researchers have predicted that more than half of the children born into comfortable circumstances today will live well into the next century.

This is a challenging and provocative forecast.

It can be put in context easily enough in this, the first decade of a new century, by pointing out that not too many people born in the first decade of the last century are alive today. If they are they are exceptional.

However, the University of Southern Denmark suggests that half of today’s primary school children will be alive to mark the bicentenary of the premier of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, in January 1907, an event that triggered a week of rioting.

The research also predicts that people will enjoy health and independence for much longer than is the norm today. They point out too, obviously enough, that this change will increase pressures on health services and the systems we use to care for our elderly relatives. They also warn that the development will have consequences for how we imagine our working lives and how we will fund far longer retirements.

It may seem foolish to fret over predictions that are not expected to be realised until long after most of us are gone but it might be no harm to consider them if only to turn the spotlight on how we care for the elderly and how we fund that care.

The Leas Cross nursing home scandal was a wake-up call and, thankfully, a new inspectorate has been established to underline that only the highest standards are acceptable in nursing homes.

In 2000, the Government moved to prepare for a pension crisis expected around 2025 and set up the National Pension Reserve Fund. However, that fund has been partially used to try to recapitalise our banks. It has also been burdened by struggling funds. Last June 14 semi-state and university schemes with assets of €1.75bn, but liabilities of nearly €3bn, were placed under its protection.

Irish workers have hugely different pension prospects depending on whether they work in the private or public sector. This is an increasingly divisive issue and will have to be resolved. Indeed, it has been suggested that the State must take over the running of private sector pensions if it is not to breach a recent European Court of Justice ruling.

There is frustration too that we have not acted on the Pensions Green Paper from more than two years ago which suggested that we, like Britain and most of Europe, establish something like Britain’s Pension Protection Fund. How much happier — and solvent — former Waterford Crystal workers would be if we had.

One of our characteristics that does not serve us well is our enthusiasm for putting off hard decisions. “Never fight the good fight today if tomorrow might do” could be a national motto.

Though the Danish research looks 100 years ahead we face a crisis much sooner. We have an ageing population and, from 2025 onwards — just 16 years away — the State will face a major challenge in meeting pension obligations. This may not be the precise moment to address these issues but we cannot ignore them for much longer.