40,000 grans and grandads are part of new organisation

Date Published: {J}

IN the past I have written about the contribution which grandparents can, and do, make in our society, through their role in families. There has been an interesting development in the area, with the launch of a national association for grandparents.

This new organisation has a distinctly Catholic flavour and its principal concern is with passing on ‘the faith’. However, if this grouping can get a crowd together like 40,000 in Knock, then there should be more than a passing interest in it as one which has the potential to become much more important.

It may be fanciful now, but can I turn back the clock just a matter of months to a time when a grey-haired mass-lobby of older citizens made the government quake in their very boots in that row over changes in over-70 medical card entitlement which were planned by Cabinet. They were quickly reconsidered when older people went on to the streets in their thousands and the government found themselves with a revolution on their hands.

Think of this lobby on some sort of permanently organised basis! They say in one passage of their literature … the contribution of grandparents was never as important as it is now. One assumes that this is not just a reference to teaching grandchildren their prayers, though that is very much the area the organisation is centred around.

Right now this is a lobby group strong on issues like changes in the central values of society. Many of the values are under pressure and, unfashionable though it may be with parts of the media, a group like this have a right to express their concern.

But isn’t it possible that they could have an input on areas where there is what can only be described as an attack on the rights of the elderly.

For instance, there is a stealth closure policy in relation to public nursing home beds. How else can one describe allowing staffing and conditions and maintenance to fall dramatically in institutions like St Francis Nursing Home, then having the standards condemned by the health quality authority – all apparently aimed at eventual closure and leaving people at the mercy of the private nursing home sector.

There are any number of other areas of attack. For instance, by definition, elderly people use their medical cards more than most others, so the alleged reform of the medical card under which it would appear people would essentially just have access to the GP, sounds suspiciously like another cuts idea which is being sold as ‘reform’ of the health services.

As I said, these are all areas of potential intersest to any group of organised grandparents. However, let’s not look too far ahead and get too fanciful. It is important to stress that The Catholic Grandparents’ Association is not a ‘trade union for grandparents’. Well, in my opinion – not yet!

The organisation is very much concentrated on the role of grandparents in passing on ‘the faith’, in simple things like helping kids with their prayers, on the contribution grandparents can make to continuing and maintaining certain values in our society, and the value of the extended family.

For more, read this week’s

Galway City Tribune.