The Alliance of Age Sector NGOs (the Alliance) represents the collective thinking of seven significant NGOs working in the age sector. Separately, each provide support and vital services to older people. Together they collaborate to combat ageism and to seek action to improve older people’s lives. This review done by the Alliance accounts for the impact of ageism in the Irish context and calls the attention to the significant failure in policy commitments relevant to our ageing population.
The review provides a deep analysis of 17 priority areas relevant to the lives of older people, rates the Government on its effort in each of these areas and provide specific recommendations to support policy implementation. Government has made good or ‘promising’ progress in some areas. This has been reflected as a ‘B’ grade awarded on the combat of ageism by recently developing and launching the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) national campaign.
The introduction of the ‘Long-Term Carer Contributions’ scheme has been graded as ‘B’. This will make it easier for long-term family carers to qualify for the State Pension (Contributory) when they reach pension age. Several ‘C-’ and ‘D’ grades were awarded across the 15 shortlisted areas. One ‘F’ and four ‘E’ grades were awarded due to the failure to publish waiting lists for housing adaptations; failure to develop an implementation plan from the National Positive Ageing Strategy; failure to benchmark State pension payments; and failure to develop a plan aimed at tackling loneliness and isolation among older people. Together, this shows a lack of significant progress and strong implementation across a range of long-standing policy commitments relevant to positive ageing. This is the Executive Summary version of the review document ‘Taking Stock: Is Government keeping its commitments to older people?’ .