Columnist doesn’t understand pensioners’ needs

IT is difficult to tell reading Ivan Yates’s column (October 14) if he genuinely does not understand the needs of older people and what it is like to survive as a pensioner in 21st century Ireland, or if he is just trying to be controversial and to provoke people who are already living in fear of what might happen on budget day.

The headline was wrong to refer to essential supports for older people, such as free travel, a pension and the household benefits package as “freebies”, especially in a column which refers to senior bankers and is written by a former politician – two groups for whom the word “freebie” means something else entirely.

Throughout his column Ivan Yates shows a lack of understanding of older people and their needs. He fails to recognise that free travel (for many people who either never drove or can no longer drive), the gas/electricity unit allowance (for people who have fixed, low incomes and are at greatest risk of fuel poverty) or the state pension (for a group where one in 10 is at risk of poverty) are not freebies, but essential supports to remain alive, healthy and retain a modicum of dignity.

Mr Yates is wrong to say pensioners have been exempt from cuts to date. The introduction of the carbon tax without the promised compensation payments for low income households is hurting older people.

Up to 2,000 older people die each winter in Ireland from cold-related illnesses. The carbon tax will make their struggle that much harder this winter. The loss of the Christmas bonus (a 2% cut in income for pensioners) made life even tougher for them last winter. Falling inflation may benefit wider society, but its benefits have bypassed many older people, with the cost of key services rising. For example, from January 2008 to July 2010, the consumer price index fell by 2.9%, but there were rises in the cost of bottled gas (17.8%), solid fuel (9.8%), hospital services (12.1%) and health insurance (32.8%).

Add to that the prescription charge – a charge designed to hit the sickest and poorest, with the proviso that the sicker you are, the more you pay – and you get some idea of the scale of hurt caused by Mr Yates’s comments.

He also fails to see how some of these payments he is proposing to end benefit the wider community. The free travel essentially subsidises everyone who uses public transport. Likewise, with the free TV licence for pensioners. The state pension is also a stream of revenue for local businesses, with more older people shopping locally.

If older people learned nothing else from Mr Yates’s column, they learned the need to educate their local TDs to the reality (as opposed to the ill-informed cliche) of what is needed to live as a pensioner, and what key services (such as pensions and the household benefits package) cannot be cut. They should contact their local politicians now – it will be too late on budget day.

Eamon Timmins

Age Action

Lr Camden Street

Dublin 2