Christmas bonus cut opposed by elderly

ONE OF the main groups representing older people has called on the Government to reverse the Budget decision not to pay a Christmas bonus to social welfare recipients this year.

Delegates at the Irish Senior Citizens’ Parliament yesterday voted in favour of an emergency motion calling for a Government U-turn on the decision in view of the hardship it will cause for social welfare recipients, especially older people.

President of the parliament, Sylvia Meehan, said older people were in shock over the removal of the one-week payment, which was equivalent to a 2 per cent reduction in State pension.

“Older people, many of them living in fuel-inefficient houses, will be colder and poorer this year unless this decision is reversed.”

Delegates also passed a series of motions calling for the reinstatement of medical cards to all over-70s.

The Government in last year’s budget introduced means testing for medical cards but greatly relaxed the eligibility limits after a massive protest campaign by older citizens.

Ms Meehan said senior citizens must respond to the economic downturn by remaining watchful and active, and demanding of good government.

Older people were not the cause of the country’s current problems, she told delegates.

In a keynote speech, Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay said there was no real need to mourn the passing of the Celtic Tiger. While good things happened during this era, it had many negative features.

“Throughout all those years, housing lists increased, the waiting lists for core disability services got longer, elderly people waited on trolleys or chairs in hospital corridors for essential treatment and care, and tens of thousands of Irish families remained stuck in grinding poverty.

“Indeed, despite regular changes of definition, the number of children in consistent poverty in Ireland remained more or less the same as the country got richer and richer.”

In addition, Ireland developed a society that is now becoming almost value-free, he said.

“I believe the day is surely coming when we will all regret the gradual erosion of a value system and its replacement by nothing at all, except perhaps the worship of materialism.”

Traditional concepts around which communities were built, such as neighbourliness, were also gone, and the discredit into which all forms of authority fell in the past 20 years left “a deep and so far unfilled vacuum”.

“We failed to defeat poverty and exclusion while we were wealthy – perhaps because we didn’t try very hard. But there is a real opportunity now, by pulling in a different direction, to set our sights a lot higher.”