Insult to suggest that older adults downsize

I have news for you, Nama.

How dare you speak so condescendingly of parents of grown children? Why do you assume such people are rattling around in their empty homes and should be shunted off to “downsize”?

I am savouring my freedom, as are the women and men with whom I associate. Following years of nurturing and caring, and the stress of working and commuting, we are too exhausted to shed tears when our children depart to pursue their own lives. Our work is done and our fledgling chicks have gathered strength, wheeling, soaring and winging confidently to freedom.

Our relationships with our grown children have evolved into adult and equal ones — more give-and-take and sharing of news and views. It’s brilliant!

Do the people in Nama live in the real world? Are they oblivious to the fact that some of our adult children have, or are increasingly likely to, boomerang right back home, unable to afford to live independently?

Are they entirely unaware of what we now call ‘the hidden homeless’?

Nama, emerge from behind your fancy desks. Quit the endless discussions, on this subject, over long, expenses-paid lunches in exclusive restaurants that most of us cannot afford.

Welcome to the brave new Ireland, to which our bankers, politicians, and all their ilk, have reduced us. Plan some other strategy. Your eureka moment will not work.

Mary Hogan

Baltinglass,

Co. Wicklow