SPEECH BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF AGE ACTION IRELAND’S POSITIVE AGEING WEEK
SPEECH BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF AGE ACTION IRELAND’S POSITIVE AGEING WEEK 29 MERRION SQUARE, DUBLIN
Dia dhíbh go léir inniu. Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh ar an ócáid speisialta seo.
I am very pleased to be in this lovely setting to launch Positive Ageing Week 2009 and to mark the opening of the Positive Ageing Week Photographic Exhibition. I would particularly like to thank Robin Webster [CEO of Age Action Ireland] for the invitation to join you for the seventh occasion on which Age Action Ireland has marked the United Nations Day of Older Persons. This year’s Positive Ageing Week will involve thousands of people in some 600 activities right across the island of Ireland. So it really constitutes a festival of celebration of Ireland’s older citizens. I warmly congratulate Age Action Ireland, and their sponsor ESB, for the focus they help bring to our understanding of the ageing process and the lives of our older family, friends, neighbours and colleagues.
Age Action Ireland has been an important campaigner for an “age-friendly” Ireland. Our life expectancy has extended remarkably in recent decades thanks to a hugely improved quality of life. Experts recently predicted that half of all girls born today will live to a hundred and our challenge is to ensure that we plan sensibly and effectively for all these hard-earned, added years so that the quality of life we live as we get older is the best it can be.
The title of this organisation reminds us that ‘age’ and ‘action’ can and should go hand-in-hand, that the later years can be a time for active citizenship, for ongoing participation at the heart of family and community life, for a healthy lifestyle with good diet, exercise, socialising, friendships and interests which are so essential for our physical and mental health. The words ‘recession’, ‘emigration’ and ‘unemployment’ were familiar to today’s older generation for much of their lives. They know a lot about adversity and hardship, about self-sacrifice and mending and making do. They know that nothing stays the same and that Ireland is today an infinitely wealthier, more advanced, educated and prosperous place than it was in their younger days. They also hear the worried and disappointed voices of a new generation facing serious economic difficulties for the first time and the wisdom, resilience, self-sufficiency and success stories of our older citizens distil into a valuable well from which to draw courage and inspiration. If ever there was a time for age action, this is surely it.
Many of us will recall that not so very long ago the years of later life tended to be associated with images of passivity, decline, increased infirmity and dependency. Retirement was seen as an end, rather than a new beginning, ageing a process of silently disappearing from so many scenes in which people had once been active. Since the 1980s, there has been a considerable change in public awareness and understanding of ageing issues. A new set of images and possibilities has reshaped our views and the ideal of ‘positive ageing’, has opened our eyes to new concepts of ageing which emphasise activity, sociability, autonomy, mobility, choice, advocacy and well-being. As the American poet Emily Dickinson put it, “we turn not older with years, but newer every day.”
More than ever before in history, we are in a position now to shape what is and will be possible in our later lives. As Mark Twain once said, “age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Thanks to Age Action Ireland and others who champion the causes of our senior citizens, we are increasingly starting to accept and believe in this truth. Some people are of course racing ahead of the posse. The GAA’S Social Initiative is a recent fine example and I have lost count of the number of initiatives that have come from Summerhill’s senior citizens - the Senior Help Line, the Fáilte Isteach programme, both so simple, so useful and so transferable that they have been copied all over the country.
The Helpline trains senior citizens to help other senior citizens over the phone. It has become a vital link to information, advice, encouragement and friendship for many thousands of people and it is run by senior citizens for senior citizens. Fáilte Isteach saw the great need that newcomers to Ireland had for help with integrating into new their adopted homeland and it matched that need with the massive resource that is our seniors who organised English language lessons for recently-arrived immigrants. And of course those lessons blossom into friendships that end isolation and build community. A clear example of a win-win situation if ever I saw one and of course an example of the power of one – of Mary Nally whose good ideas have transformed life for so many of Ireland’s seniors.
These activities are good examples of the basic and simple building-blocks of positive ageing: positive attitudes to becoming older; interests, hobbies and other activities that have a social dimension; regular exercise and good nutrition; and contact with family, friends and neighbours, things that put a joy and fulfilment into life and which are well captured in the Positive Ageing Week Photographic Exhibition. The slogan of the exhibition says “Capture the Energy of Life” and I hope that is exactly what our senior citizens are doing and will continue to do. For those whose lives are in the doldrums of illness or loneliness and isolation, I hope this week will give them a fresh determination to absorb this new culture of positive aging and to commit to doing things differently in their own lives.
They say that when it comes to staying young, a mind-lift beats a face-lift any day. Positive Aging Week is exactly that mind-lift. I hope it lifts hearts and minds all over the country and opens our eyes to new possibilities for fun and fulfilment, for friendship and for joining the fight for our country’s well-being as well as our individual wellbeing. It therefore gives me great pleasure to launch Positive Ageing Week 2009.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.