Irish Examiner view: A chance to improve care for older citizens

How noble it would be if we were to decide to provide world-class care for all our older citizens.

Just as this summer's Tokyo Olympics were deferred until the closing days of next July many other plans or special events have been knocked off-schedule by the rolling, almost unmeasurable pandemic. This can be frustrating, especially if you are a hotelier with a long list of planned but still unconfirmable weddings. However, it may also offer some opportunity if we look hard enough. As ever, most of the clouds have a silver lining even if the trick is to identify it and, if needs be, change tack to realise any potential it might offer.

One of those opportunities centres on how we care for those who because of age, incapacity or simple, spirit-sapping isolation are no longer as independent as they once were. The pandemic has highlighted in the most graphic ways why some of our parents, uncles or aunts, older neighbours or friends speak of the prospect of moving to a nursing home with an undisguised air of dread. Of course, most nursing homes reach standards that seem to allay those concerns but there have been more than enough examples of the other kind too.