REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE SENIOR HELP LINE STUDY CITY WEST HOTEL, DUBLIN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE SENIOR HELP LINE STUDY CITY WEST HOTEL, DUBLIN, Monday, 18 OCTOBER, 2004
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas bheith anseo libh inniu ar an ócáid speisialta seo.
I’m delighted to be here today to launch Dr. Eamon O’Shea’s important Study on the Senior Help Line, a service I was privileged to be at the birth of back in 1998 and to become patron of two years later. I owe thanks to the remarkable Mary Nally, National Co-ordinator, for inviting me to yet another red letter day in the service’s impressive, albeit short, history.
This Report puts on record in a scholarly way what many of you here already know from observation - that the Help Line is providing a valuable, in fact a critical and life-enhancing service to older people in our society. It also serves to underline the great work done by the army of wonderful volunteers who have worked tirelessly to make the service the great success story it has become.
We have a tendency to categorise people, to put them into pigeon-holes – old, young, unemployed, professional, asylum-seeker. It is at times an innocent and reasonable process but stereotyping carries the danger of blinding us to the complexity of each human being by over-focussing on a single common characteristic. Some psychologists tell us that we do so in an effort to make sense of our world and because it is convenient, serving as an easy descriptor. Human beings, they say, are ‘cognitive misers’. We don’t like to work the brain harder than we have to. The negative side of stereotyping can have particularly detrimental consequences for older people perhaps more than other ‘groups’ in society. The writer Anthony Powell once said, “Growing old is like being increasingly penalised for a crime you haven’t committed”. Old age is viewed by some as being exclusively about frailty, ill-health, loss of independence, decline, retirement, bowing out. The richer side has to fight to get a look in, the well of experience, the huge contribution already made to every aspect of life, the continuing ambition to make an ongoing contribution. Our senior citizens have been tried and tested by life. An old proverb says - test your friends before you need them. Here is a reservoir of already well-tested friends, men and women who often have that precious gift of time to share with others, to explore new opportunities, to take on new challenges.
The Senior Help Line service itself is an example of the imagination and the generosity of our senior citizens for its army of volunteers have created a service for older people run by older people. Not only has the service provided a crucial support to the many users but more than half of the volunteers recounted how they themselves had become more satisfied with life and felt better about themselves because they were involved in providing the Help Line. The prayer of St Francis of Assisi says that it is in giving that we receive and the experience of this service bears out the truth of that.
From a good idea with just 35 volunteers the Senior Help Line has grown into a 300 strong army operating seven days a week in 9 centres nationwide, with two more centres coming on stream very shortly. If those statistics alone don’t tell the full story of the success of the Help Line and the great need in communities for its services, the fact that the number of callers increased 18 fold between 1999 and last year surely does. What is sad, if not surprising, is that the study tells us that half of all callers do so out of loneliness and only a few, very few do so from money worries. The company of another human being, that which costs nothing is the greatest un-fulfilled need in our high achieving society. Making time for each other is a very precious gift in this time-poor culture and the message from your experience tells us loud and clear that loneliness is ruining lives and it does not have to be so. Another message you bring home to us and one many people will be distressed to hear is that some of our senior citizens live in outright fear and suffer abuse, even in the four walls of their own home. For them the help line is a lifeline. It opens a window on that sad secret world and lets in the air of hope.
Back in 1998 the need for the service was a hunch, born of the experience and wisdom of a small group of determined people led by Mary Nally. The growth of the service proved that their instincts were sound - they had tapped into an unmet and an urgent need. Now comes the scholarly vindication set out in Dr. Eamonn O’Shea’s comprehensive evaluation. Lives have been changed because of this service. Problems have been sorted out because of it. Our awareness as a community has been enhanced and developed because of it. Our Senior Citizens have grown more confident, more articulate and more determined to stake their claim to a significant role in modern Irish society. The Senior Help Line service listened to them, one by one, took them seriously and took their story to the heart of the national agenda. It is hard now to imagine life without it. What a poorer place Ireland would be if Summerhill had said no those few years ago. We are grateful to Dr. Nazih Eldin from the North Eastern Health Board who has championed the cause of the service from the very beginning and continues to provide valuable support and advice and direction. We are grateful too to the many others who have helped make the Senior Help Line service, born here in Summerhill just six short years ago, the resounding success it is today. May it continue to expand and grow sure in the knowledge that the work matters deeply in the lives of those to whom we owe so much.
Comhghairdeas libh go léir. Go n-éirí go geal libh. Go raibh maith agaibh.