REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE RETIREMENT PLANNING COUNCIL OF IRELAND SLIVER JUBILEE LUNCH
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE RETIREMENT PLANNING COUNCIL OF IRELAND SLIVER JUBILEE LUNCH HERBERT PARK HOTEL, BALLSBRIDGE
Is cúis áthas agus sásaimh dom bheith anseo libh inniu agus muid ag ceiliúradh cúig bliana is fiche dul chun cinn na heagraíochta seo.
I was delighted to accept your invitation to attend this very special Silver Jubilee lunch for the Retirement Council of Ireland and I would like to begin by acknowledging and warmly commending the invaluable contribution that the Council has made over the past 25 years in preparing people for retirement.
Retirement is hard-earned but many people approach it with mixed feelings. The working world has shaped their lives for decades. The time you get out of bed, the people you meet, the problems you face, the time you get home, the mood you are in when you get home, these things which eat up the hours in a day are all dictated by the world we work in. It’s a discipline. It brings its rewards but it can be relentless. Time for the self can be hard to come by, so retirement with its promise of time should be a welcome thing. For some it is. They just cannot wait to get stuck into the garden, to learn a new skill, to be more involved with community or grandchildren, to do a bit of travelling, to read more, to play more golf, to do all the things that work kept them from doing. Some people seem to blossom in retirement but for others it can be a traumatic time both for the retiring individuals and their families. For them, the reshaping of their lives is very difficult. It involves the loss of income, of colleagues, of the daily drama of the workplace, of a sense of being needed. It presages ageing, confronts us dramatically with the inexorable passage of the years and, no doubt, many here know stories of successful, apparently healthy people who just seem to lose their zest for life after retirement.
Taking the dread out of retirement is essential for it can truly be a golden phase, a time of great personal fulfilment and for many, many people it is just that. But precisely because it involves a huge shift in everyday life, it takes a certain amount of planning and determined mental adjustment to make the necessary change in lifestyle as smooth and unstressful as possible, both for the individual and, at times, their even more stressed family. That is where the Retirement Council of Ireland has made an enormous contribution. Through your courses and research, you have ensured that retirement is seen and felt as a transition to a new and exciting stage in life. It is not the closing of a door but the opening up of new opportunities. Those opportunities are unlikely to walk in through the door and grab you - you have to grab them and it is particularly encouraging to see the increase in the numbers attending your courses around the country. Here are people who know they need to prepare for retirement and they are doing just that. That increase also demonstrates a corresponding awareness and acceptance on the part of employers that they too have a role to play in facilitating the change of life-style from work to retirement for their employees.
Today we live longer, stay healthier longer, so much so that we can expect to be retired for a substantial part of our lives. Older citizens have a vast reservoir of skills and experience which are hugely under-utilised. That enormous supply of untapped talent and energy presents us with a major challenge to encourage and empower it. The UN International Year of the Volunteers has already helped us to acknowledge and celebrate the valuable voluntary work undertaken by countless retired people up and down the country. Our society would be a far poorer and less generous place without their efforts, and I know from meeting so many of the groups in which older people are active, that the volunteers also gain enormous satisfaction and fulfilment from their work. In these busy times, we need people to build up communities and we need people who have the time to commit it, the passion for it and the experience of how to do it. Our retired citizens are the backbone of community and I congratulate the Retirement Planning Council for encouraging people on the verge of retirement to consider volunteering as a way of contributing to their community and using their skills built up over a lifetime of work.
Over the last 25 years the Retirement Planning Council has helped to ensure that the experience of leaving the workforce is not an end, but a new beginning, for a great many people. I would like to thank all of you who have helped the service to grow and develop over that time, giving of your own time and energy to make it the success it is today. The one thing which will never retire it seems is the Retirement Planning Council and I wish you every success for the next 25 years.
Go gcúití Dia bhur saothar daoibh.