The shocking scenes of neglect of the elderly in Leas Cross are signs of a wider problem in Irish society, where people are just too busy to look after each other, writes Kate Holmquist.
TV images of vulnerable, distressed elderly at the Leas Cross nursing home provoked instant reaction from the Government and public alike this week, along with further revelations that a number of other nursing homes are also engaging in bad practices.
For many of those attending the Communities First Summit to mark European Neighbours' Day in Dublin this week, this latest scandal is a symptom of a greater problem that is threatening to undermine the stability of Irish society.
Vulnerable elderly are cordoned off in expensive nursing homes; children spend long hours in childcare; teenagers are left to run rampant in private estates, necessitating the introduction of Asbos; the middle-aged spend their lives commuting and, all the while, our sense of belonging and responsibility to a society greater than ourselves is withering away.
We are becoming increasingly isolated and selfish as individuals, ghettoised by the property boom into streets and estates based on wealth and status, rather than on a desire to be part of a neighbourly, mutually supportive community.
Another word for this mutual caring and concern is "social capital", a concept that has been brought onto the social agenda by Harvard professor and adviser to the Taoiseach Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and Better Together. A key speaker at the Dublin summit, Putnam told The Irish Times: "The Taoiseach is, quite properly, aware of Ireland's historic strengths in social capital. The impression I get is that the collapse in social capital is not as severe in Ireland as it is elsewhere, but that the pace of change is much more rapid here, compressing into two decades changes that occurred over centuries in other cultures. The rate of adjustment has got to be quicker and something must be done to recover the social capital that has been lost, or things will get much, much worse very, very quickly."
Factors that are destroying social capital, says Putnam, include rising immigration, two-career families and the widening gap between rich and poor. Generations can no longer afford to live in the same area, so that extended families are unavailable to support each other.Many of the improvements in Irish society in relation to children, people with disabilities and treatment of the elderly have come about as a result of public activism and volunteering by farsighted people, now aged 60 and older, who grew up in hard times and were determined to make a difference.
Putnam calls these "The Great Generation" because they lived through hard times, are idealistic and have provided more volunteers than any generation before or since. Today's middle-aged people are too preoccupied with earning and spending to become involved as the older generation die, which means that fewer and fewer people are willing to become voluntarily involved in creating communities which can cope with the huge changes taking place. Much of the volunteer work done today involves charity fund-raising, which is valuable but focuses on funding services, rather than acting for social change.
Leas Cross is a symbol of the way in which society has handed over a vital caring function to private enterprise, which has its own values. As Peter Finnegan, director of Dublin City Development Board, puts it: "When something is undervalued, service is provided at the bottom level of the wage rates by migrant workers without the necessary framework of support. The system should be catching [ inadequate care] earlier, but at the same time there should be adequate resources to ensure that our social services and infrastructure are up to EU levels, and that they are monitored to ensure that they remain up to standard, whether those people being cared for are children, people with disabilities or the elderly."
We tend to react when there is an obvious case of neglect or mistreatment, rather than becoming involved in planning communities which can protect people from isolation and vulnerability. Finnegan adds: "Too much of our public policy is based on rescuing babies from the river downstream, rather than going upstream to investigate why babies are being thrown into the river in the first place."