REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT A FORUM TO HIGHLIGHT THE ISSUE OF “LONELINESS AND ISOLATION…”
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT A FORUM TO HIGHLIGHT THE ISSUE OF "LONELINESS AND ISOLATION AS EXPERIENCED BY SOME OLDER MEN"
Dia dhíbh a chairde go léir ‘s fáílte chuig Áras an Uachtaráin.
Good morning everybody and welcome to Áras an Uachtaráin and to this special forum when we put the spotlight on one particular and important aspect of Irish society and that is the lives, choices, problems and possibilities faced by some of our older male citizens.
Yeats once said that this “is no country for old men”. I want to be sure he was wrong. The idea for this forum has been gathering in my mind for quite a while and it began with simply observing that the many senior citizens events I attended around the country were much better attended by women than by men. Talking to people working in the field of health and social care of the elderly they too talked of the special difficulties experienced by men and, of course, in recent years research on suicide has brought to our attention that older men are the second most at risk group after young males.
A substantial and growing body of research and analysis has opened up to us the needs, the concerns and the desires of our older population and in many instances these will be the same for both men and women, but not always. The stories of our older men and women are significantly different in some respects. So today we meet with one particular group of citizens in mind in the hope that between us we can draw on the wealth of insight, experience and goodwill that is gathered here as we try to understand more deeply what is happening and see more clearly what could be happening.
The bottom line is that we are a society pledged in our Constitution to promote the common good and to assure the dignity and freedom of each individual. At its simplest we want those who live here to have full and fulfilling lives. Because the human person is fairly complex there are many things we need in order for our dignity to be enhanced and our sense of human solidarity reinforced - a home, warm and comfortable, money enough for our needs, reasonable access to a range of public and voluntary services from doctors to buses, people to care for us and a chance for us to care in turn, ready community support and interaction, a social life to give us fun, good memories and something to look forward to, opportunities to express ourselves, to develop ourselves and our interests... These things and more we need and so today we hope to look at the lives lived by Ireland’s older males in a holistic and not a one-dimensional way.
There are some terrific examples of good ideas and good practice that are already working well right across the country. There are men and women of phenomenal energy and commitment to our ageing citizens and we’ll hear from them over the course of the day but if you have ideas or experiences, suggestions or ambitions then there will be every chance to set them out here today. An idea shared is not like a bag of sweets shared … the sweets disappear. Rather, a good idea appears and reappears as it is copied and imitated, updated and improved by the new recruits who are persuaded of its value.
We want to have a first-class discussion and that is why we asked Ireland’s best facilitator, the ever-young, retired six times and still working the clock round, Gay Byrne. I am deeply grateful for his participation.
Today’s forum will, I hope, help all of to us make very sure that, in this newly confident and successful Ireland, there is indeed a place and an important place for our senior citizens whose lives were largely characterised by lack of opportunity and frugality as well as by self-sacrifice, generous values and faith in the genius of the next generation. We are nothing, have nothing without them and where they are hurting or where they are missing we need to be, healing and helping so that no-one lives on those lonely margins but all are gathered in community, in the centre, needed, wanted, their lives enriched and enriching.
I thank you for being here, for what you bring with you and what you will share by way of experience, skill and ideas. To all those who have worked so hard to make this day happen - a very big thank you.