Irish Examiner view: We need to focus on policy around ageing

Ireland needs joined-up thinking about how to plan for an ageing population

The arguments about the Fair Deal scheme are a specific example of a much wider malaise and structural problem within our society. Picture: iStock

The arguments about the injustices of the Fair Deal scheme on nursing home subsidies are a specific example of a much wider malaise and structural problem within our society — the total lack of cohesion and joined-up thinking about how to plan for an ageing population.

It is a challenge that touches upon every aspect of our lives. From employment to pensions to taxation; from health to housing; from the madcap and often self-serving rush to apply technology as a salve to every problem, to transport policy aspirations which are over-reliant on a switch to cycling and walking. And overarching everything is the question of the regard and respect in which the aged are held.

Ageing, and climate change, are the megatrends which will test us for the rest of this century and beyond. The environment has a powerful senior advocate in Eamon Ryan but where is the easily identifiable champion at cabinet level for the complex web of issues affecting older people, and by implication all of us, in the Republic?

The job is subsumed within the Department of Health at a junior ministerial rank, one of three reporting to Stephen Donnelly. The current incumbent, Mary Butler, has a joint portfolio that includes another of the overwhelming, modern, growth areas — mental health. Do we really imagine that either of these distinct sets of demands can best be managed and administered by double jobbing?

The controversy about levels of public subsidy applied to patients in private nursing homes is not one which is confined to Ireland, but it was inevitable that comparisons would be drawn between the financial support available to patients in the State sector and those who receive their treatment outside the system. 

The numbers are increasing regularly, but the money is not following the case load. This argument is but one manifestation of matters arising from the onset of age. The pensions burden, and whether the younger generation will be prepared to go on funding the payments to their elders is yet another.

One film which has been doing the rounds in Irish cinemas contemplates an alternative future in Japan, a nation which venerates old age, but which is in the grip of a population crisis. Japan is ageing faster than any other country in the world. Women typically live to 87 and men to 81. Almost 40% of its population is over 60. Birth rates are falling.

Plan 75 posits a government-sponsored programme of voluntary assisted dying, a subject which is talked about quietly at the edges of societal debate in this country.

It is a satire, but one which may become familiar to us over future decades. As a country, we must focus now to make sensible decisions which impact upon the old in the future.