A LIST of eccentric adults in the Dublin area is being compiled by the Eastern Health Board.
People in health agencies in the city are being asked to say whom they think is are eccentric. The information will be used "to develop a multi sectorial approach to drive and shape policy for service delivery to this group of people".
Yet in what appears to be a touch of eccentricity entirely in keeping with the nature of the exercise, the EHB promises not to make use of the names it gathers in the survey. The information will be used to quantify the extent of the "problem" of eccentricity.
The "problem", according to a circular introducing the "eccentric adult survey", is that "it has proved difficult to meet the needs of such people as their life experiences have made them unable or unwilling to accept services, and in many cases their needs are unknown".
Curiously, the EHB seems to regard eccentricity as a recent phenomenon. Yet it is more usual to hear commentators bewailing the death of eccentricity - in the form of "characters" for them to laugh at - than its arrival in Dublin.
"In recent years," says the circular, "statutory and voluntary workers providing services in the community, especially in the Dublin area, have come across people who, for whatever reason, do not conform to what society would consider normal behaviour."
The discovery of this phenomenon has led the EHB, Dublin Corporation and Dublin Council for the Aged to, in the words of the circular, "come together" to do something.
Having said "it is not intended to marginalise people further by labelling them", the circular goes on to label people "as eccentric, that is, not conforming to common rules who are reclusive and refuse access to family and statutory and voluntary services disruptive people whose behaviour causes concern to others, especially neighbours [and] those who live in squalor."
All agencies which provide services to adults in the Dublin area are asked to supply the names and addresses of eccentric adults. They will later be interviewed "in order to collect information on the individual/s known to them".
A worker in one agency who has seen the circular told The Irish Times that some agencies providing services to Dublin adults employ some quite odd people. They are now being given a golden opportunity to describe other people as eccentric.
Neither have the agencies been told to inform people that they are reporting them as eccentric. Being eccentric, of course, they wouldn't want to be on the list. But then, who would?