Being indifferent to the contribution that the elderly can continue to make to our society is a los

As his magical acting powers waned, due to his advancing years, Micheál Mac Liammór exclaimed in exasperation, “Don’t be fooled. Old age is terrible.”

Maybe not. Recently there have been some good news stories about old age.

Take Edwin McGreal’s report in this newspaper last week on Thomas Ketterick, almost 96 years, who qualified for the final of the World Cup fishing competition on Lough Mask. He still drives his own car and plays cards four times a week. An avid supporter of Sligo Rovers and Castlebar Celtic, he attends their matches.

Or Leonard Cohen, the singer/songwriter, who at the age of 74 enthralled full houses at a series of concerts in Dublin.

Or Tom Watson, much younger at 59, but old for a professional golfer competing at the highest level, who just failed to win his sixth British Open title after a play-off last month.

If this trend continues Pat Spillane may yet be Kerry’s secret weapon in the remaining games of the All-Ireland series. Did he not say on television at half time in the All-Ireland Final of 2002 that his grandmother could defend better than some of the Armagh backs? He must have rued that remark when Armagh stormed back in the second half to pip Kerry by a point.

However not all the recent news about old age has been good. The Lees Cross report documented extensive deficiencies in nursing care in that establishment.

Failures in best practice in our nursing homes are disturbingly common. A HSE investigation, reported last week, found instances of physical and verbal abuse, mistakes with medication, non-clinical staff performing clinical duties, poor hygiene and inadequate supervision. Of the 160 complaints it received against 120 homes, 32 were fully upheld while 22 were partially proven.

Refreshingly, ‘Nursing Home Ireland’, which represents 300 of the country’s 450 homes, did not minimise or seek to explain away the results of the investigation. Its CEO, Tadhg Daly, stated that the findings are “unacceptable”. He promised to work with the organisation to try to ensure they are not repeated.

The cult of youth has been dominant in the Western world since the end of the Second World War. To use some words of WB Yeats, our society “is no country for old men”.

Some years ago a luxury shopping complex opened in Luton. Along its malls there are benches where customers can rest from the labour of shopping.

Soon after it opened a bedraggled old man, lounging quietly on one of the benches, was asked to move. His presence was an affront in the cathedral of consumerism.

That story is an extreme example of our tendency to deny the reality of old age. It has become a kind of taboo subject.

Such denial is a foolish endeavour. Old age is a reality that many of us will face. Due to improved nutrition and better medication, life expectancy in the developed world has increased significantly. Nursing homes are a growth industry in Ireland.

Being indifferent to the contribution that the elderly can continue to make to our society is a loss. Being unconcerned about the poor conditions in which some of them live is an abdication of moral responsibility.

I believe it is important that we seek to appreciate the needs, hopes and fears of the elderly in our society and respond to them. Their sacrifices helped create the relative social and economic comfort we now enjoy.

Recently, I discovered two poems that evoke some of the quiet terrors of old age. In ‘Leaving for a Nursing Home’, Pádraig J Daly writes of the loneliness and dislocation of an old lady as she leaves her familiar surrounding:

“She reaches a thin hand

to clutch at mine:

She is frail and frightened.

She must leave all that years

have made familiar

and go where she will lie at night

listening to the moans of strangers.

No more dusting jugs and photographs,

setting out cups,

filling at evening her hot water jar,

putting the door on double lock,

climbing the short stairs to her

bedroom.

If a clock ticks it will not be hers.

If a phone rings in the night,

it will be for some other.”

Bernard O’Donoghue’s, ‘In Millstreet Hospital’, tells of visiting a cousin in the hospital where he also encounters an old man in the grip of senility:

“When I leave at the end of visiting hours a small, tidy man is sitting by the door; stick, well-knotted tie, watch chain, tweed jacket.

He gets to his feet, raises his hat and enquires, Excuse me troubling you, but would you be going anywhere near a railway station?

The young smiling nurse bends over him and takes him by the elbow saying: “Maybe tomorrow, James. Maybe tomorrow we’ll take you to the station.”

The civility of a society is judged by how it protects its vulnerable members, even during a time of economic recession. The elderly, especially those acutely debilitated by infirmity and senility, require that sensitive protection.