Golden years for ageing in Ireland of the 21st Century

Lifestyle –  Judy Murphy meets Eamon O’Shea, an expert on ageing who says older people should be kept to the forefront of society

He’s best known as the man who managed the Tipperary Senior hurling team for three years, but Eamon O’Shea, who is professor of economics at NUIG, is also an expert on ageing.

And in country with a rapidly ageing population, his expertise in how getting old affects us, both individually and as a society, has never been more needed.

Eamon heads up the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology at NUIG, a place that acts as a resource for everybody who is involved in ageing in Ireland. It was founded in 2006, supported by Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation, and has been researching the social and economic impacts of ageing ever since.

Eamon, who has specialised in this area since the mid 1980s, has an invaluable piece of advice about dealing with growing old.

“We should approach older age from the time we are at school rather than when a person is 70. Ageing is all part of the same river, we are just at different stages, but it’s just one long continuum.”

He recommends that people should start being physically healthy when they are young.

“Look after yourself always because it will help you later on.”

On a larger scale, from a policy point of view, society needs to provide opportunities for older people to engage, to keep them working, to ensure social connectivity and to provide resources for their communities.

“Ever before we start talking about services, it’s important to organise society and community to reflect that older people matter to us. That’s if we believe they do,” he says. And Eamon does.

It’s vital to see older people not just as vulnerable human beings, but also as real live participants, with the potential of impacting on society right until the time they die, he says.

“Our capabilities change as we get older and we are not capable of doing stuff we did 20 years ago, but we have other capabilities.”

Eamon sees reason for optimism about ageing in contemporary Ireland.

“We are staying active for longer and our incomes per capita enable us to do more as we get older. We are more aware of illness-prevention and of maintaining physical health. That allows us to arrive at older age fitter.

“But keeping older people to the forefront of society is not something we should take for granted,” he adds.

When Eamon started out in this area nearly three decades ago, there was no real strategy or policy for ageing. But times have changed.

Better medicine, economic improvement and development mean that people are living longer, and he feels we should celebrate that rather than see it as an issue.

“We have to find ways to live well for those extra years. Let’s celebrate and find ways of improving ageing.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.