Speech at the Active Retirement Association AGM
Slieve Russell Hotel, Cavan, 27th April 2016
Is mór an pléisiúir dom a bheith anseo i gContae an Chabháin inniu chun labhairt libh ag bhur gCruinniú Cinn Bhliana. Ar an gcéad dul síos is mian liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil libh as bhur fíorchaoin fáilte, agus le Maureen Kavanagh, bhur bPríomhoifigeach Feidhmiúcháin, as an cuireadh a thug sí dom labhairt libh inniu.
[It is a great pleasure to be here today in Cavan and to speak to you all during your Annual General Meeting. May I commence by thanking you all for the very generous welcome you have extended to me, and in particular to thank your Chief Executive Officer, Maureen Kavanagh for her kind invitation to address you today.]
The roots of the Active Retirement Association are now deeply embedded into Irish society and into communities across the country. The seeds of the movement were, of course first sewn in 1978 when an exhibition entitled ‘Focus on Retirement’ inspired the formation of Ireland’s first Active Retirement Association in Dun Laoghaire. They were seeds which began to truly flourish a few short years later, with the establishment of The Federation for Active Retirement Associations.
Today the Federation encompasses five hundred and seventy associations, providing dynamic and energetic meeting points for almost twenty five thousand members; a figure, I am sure, that will continue to grow in the years to come.
For over thirty years now your Association has enabled Ireland’s older population a continued sense of real engagement with their communities, an opportunity to build new friendships and a great spirit of solidarity founded on shared experience and wisdom. That is an important core objective, recognising the importance of social connection at all stages of our lives, and the great potential and will that exists amongst senior citizens to continue making what is, based on its wisdom, an invaluable contribution to society.
The generation originally inspired to set up the Association, those who retired in the 1970s, was a generation who had seen great change during their lifetimes and who had developed a very different perspective on retirement and aging from their own parents.
They no longer wished to view retirement as a time for passive citizenship, for a quiet winding down of what had gone before as the reins of pro-active participation in society were yielded to a new generation. Neither did they wish to live in a society where young and old were seen to occupy very different spaces, their roles, obligations and capacities remaining separate and disengaged.
They were a generation who had contributed so much to the forming and shaping of an independent Ireland, an Ireland of social change, greater involvement in education and, of course, new possibilities, not least those facilitated by advances in science and technology, and they were no longer prepared to perpetuate any notion that those who had retired from paid employment or active child rearing had reached the end of their contributory days.
There was at that time an emerging sense of empowerment of older people, who were no longer willing to subscribe to the stereotyping that can lead to exclusion on the basis of age. As with all significant and worthwhile change in society this was not, of course, a transformation that happened overnight. We owe, there can be no doubt, a great debt to those who had the vision and the capacity to begin the creation of a new chapter on life as a senior citizen in Ireland; a chapter of new directions and possibilities.
Today, I am pleased to say that attitudes towards aging have changed substantially and continue to change. All around us, and every day, we witness the contributions of senior citizens who engage with their society as participants in every sense – as consumers, mentors, caregivers, child-minders, volunteers, advisers, neighbours, advocates, artists and all of the many other important roles that they continue to fill after their retirement from the workplace.
Today, as the successors to those imaginative founding citizens who aspired to a fully conscious and critical life, you have new challenges to address as you work to ensure that we, as a society, recognise and celebrate the contribution of all voices, across all generations. There are inclusion challenges which it is rewarding to confront. In the face of rapidly changing demographic structures, we are challenged as a society to support and enable a diverse, dynamic and educated aging population who wish to live independently and remain full and active contributors in their communities.
In the last twenty or so years, people all over the world have, on average, gained six years of life expectancy. By 2020, a quarter of Europeans will be over 60 years of age, while children born after 2011 have a one in three chance of reaching their 100th birthday. Here in Ireland it is predicted that there will be 1.4 million people aged 65 and over living in our society within the next twenty five years. Social institutions have to adapt to these changes as does the market place. I often wonder to what extend older citizens’ capacities are taken into consideration in product design.
Increased life spans are, of course, wonderful developments to be warmly welcomed as a measure of human development and as an expansion in the possibilities of human life. They are developments, however, which have profound consequences for so many areas of public policy – including health policy, pensions policy and workplace policy - and which prompt much debate about our ageing society and how it can be best supported.
Is ceisteanna tábhachtacha iad seo a chaithfimid a phlé go hiomlán. Sa lá atá inniu ann, agus daoine ag maireachtáil níos faide, caithfimíd breathnú ar an feiniméan seo go dearfach agus pleananna cuí a dhéanamh ionas go mbeidh muid in ann an sochaí seo a shaibhriú agus muid ag dul in aois, seachas breathnú air mar dhúshlán a chaithfimíd dul i ngleic leis.
[All of these are important issues and ones that need discussion in a holistic manner. Taken in isolation, or approached in narrow fashion, the expansion of life expectancy can be presented as a challenge to be overcome, rather than as a positive human phenomenon that must be planned for as a source of great enrichment for all of society.]
That focus must shift to encompass debate around changes in mind sets, policies and in how we organise ourselves as a society.
Longer lives require good planning, at both a personal and societal level and it is critical that we continue to initiate, create new forums for shared ideas, and engage in policy dialogue in order to address the challenges and the opportunities of an aging population.
Providing for aging and longer life with dignity must be a central pillar of our social contract. Just as we had to learn to build our policy structure in ways which respected childhood and motherhood; so too we must plan effectively for rich and flourishing older age.
The policy changes and the changes in mindset that are needed must take place at the communal level, and they are best achieved by working together. The underlying principle of advancing the interests of older people must be a deep-rooted ethic of solidarity.
I have every confidence that Active Retirement Ireland will continue to have a key role to play in providing a platform to voice the concerns and issues of your members. Yours is a strong track record in advocacy for the improvement of facilities and services for older people. That is a role that I hope will strengthen and expand as senior citizens play an increasingly important role in a changing Ireland.
Continued dialogue on the needs and the potential of an aging population are essential to the fostering of active senior citizenship and, in that way, the creation of truly democratic societies and communities. It is through such active participation, by groups such as the Active Retirement Association, that increased and better policy measures and services to meet the needs and enable the contribution of older people in our society to come to the fore can best be achieved.
Active and ongoing engagement by senior citizen organisations in public dialogue is critical to ensuring opportunities to comment on issues which impact on your members, and to becoming recognised as equal partners in such dialogue.
Your contribution to improving the visibility and empowering the voice of an aging population will be critical to the ensuring of a fully inclusive democracy as Ireland, like the rest of Europe, must adapt to the challenges and the advantages that longer and healthier retirement will bring.
Mar fhocal scoir, is mian liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl daoibh arís as an fáilte a d'fhear sibh romham inniu. Guím gach dea-ghuí ar bhur bplé agus ar bhur mbreitheanna le linn bhur gCruinniú Cinn Bhliana, agus gach rath oraibh don todhchaí agus sibh ag leanúint le bhur gcuid oibre tábhachtach.
[May I conclude by thanking you, once again, for welcoming me here today. I wish you well with your deliberations and decisions during your AGM, and every success as you continue with your important work.]
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir