At 87, Grace Slattery has just had a new kitchen installed, putting up with two months of dust and hammering to achieve her dream: "We demolished the old kitchen and the new one has an apex roof which I've always wanted. It will be modern with integrated units. But the place has been chaotic, I got a bit low last week with all the comings and goings and went out and cheered myself up with a facial".
Grace retired from the civil service on marriage, as women of her era had to, and she has seven children, 19 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She puts her positive outlook down to her genes and her mother: "She was a great role-model. She used to take us on picnics on the strand, boil the potatoes in the sea water, and swim with us.
"I have become defensive about being old. I remember going for the bus a while back and there was a bit of sniggering about the wrinklies on the quarter to ten going to Mass. I was the last to get on and a brat of a bus conductor said: `Hurry up, granny'. I said to him: `I'm not your granny, thankfully!' I think we need to speak up more about that kind of thing."
The number of older people living in the Republic continues to increase. The 1995 census recorded 413,882 people aged 65, representing over one in 11 of the population. Of equal significance is the growth in the proportion of older people as a percentage of the general population - for example, the numbers of over 75s will double in the next 50 years. Put another way, at the beginning of this century one in 25 Europeans was aged over 60. By the year 2020, older people will be one in four.
This demographic shift is usually discussed solely as a health care time bomb waiting to explode. The greying of green Ireland can get bogged down in a debate on dodgy nursing homes or the need for large print books in the local library. Real issues, right enough, but not the full story, as they can characterise older people solely as a problem, rather than a valid section of the population, or even as a resource with something to offer.
Older women represent the majority of older people in Ireland, due to longer life expectancy. But in 1993, the Year of Older People, most of the official committees were composed of men, and some of them young whippersnappers at that. It was partly out of this imbalance that the Older Women's Network (OWN) was born. OWN gives a voice to the experience of women growing older. A forum for discussion and support, it encourages assertiveness and campaigns to influence policy-makers on issues such as health, education and housing. The organisation holds its first national convention in Maynooth on September 22nd-24th. Speakers include historian Dr Margaret MacCurtain, Anne Maher, of the Irish Pensions Board and Una Ni Quinn, Irish Rural Links.
Own delegate, Maedbh Conway-Piskorska, was head of children's and educational programmes in RTE at the age of 32, worked all her life, married at 40 and had a son, retired at 62, and today at 69 is busy, at her own pace: "The job was very demanding and I gave up a lot to do it. The pressure was fierce. In the early days as head of children's programmes I didn't have a secretary or a p.a. I would be writing out the pay sheets and the cue sheets in longhand! It was very labour intensive."
Since her retirement she has concluded some unfinished business by completing the cataloguing of place-names in Irish of her native Co Meath, a job she began in 1952 for the Irish Placenames Commission. "I presented it this year and I wasn't too late, because Meath was the last county to be done."
She is happy in her skin: "I grew up in a household where the boys and girls were treated equally and given a university education. I was never a blushing violet and yes, I would have a good sense of self-esteem. I'm me, myself, I've always been myself, I've never identified my personality with the job I do, and today I'm still me.
"My retirement has been a time of rediscovery, reflection, contemplation. You can allow yourself to be sad, to be more aware of your feelings. I have always had a strong intellectual side, and today I'm reading literature I would have read at university but with a much deeper appreciation and satisfaction."
But while she may be personally content she identifies institutionalised discrimination towards older women: "When it comes to health, women who have stayed at home to rear their families had short shrift from the State. They couldn't get their teeth done because they had no stamp. The result was you had whole generations of women walking around feeling they were supposed to lose their teeth in their late 30s after having five to six kids. It was crazy. And it's still going on.
"Every day, doctors are making decisions about where older people stand in the health care queue. It has never been debated, and it needs to come out into the open."
Ageist attitudes include seeing older people as physically and intellectually diminished, regarding a lower standard of living for them as acceptable, believing that retired people are no longer productive, seeing paid work as the only work of value and equating beauty solely with youth. Research indicates that at a profound level society holds such attitudes because we fear old age. Portraying older people as different or marginalised helps to distance us from what we fear in our own future.
The fact that being older can mean being happier still seems a well-kept secret. Ina Broughall, now 67, and her husband moved to Blackrock, Co Louth seven years ago: "This is an absolutely brilliant time of my life," she says. "I live and love every day because I'm not under pressure. We can take off at the drop of a hat and take advantage of last-minute holiday offers. We've been away three times this year already.
"When we moved here first I enrolled in an art class and discovered I have flair. I can't wait to get up and get out to the studio. It gives me a wonderful sense of achievement, and because I'm painting, I see things differently, I literally see things in a whole new light."
She concedes that there are some downsides to being old: "We would all like to grow old gracefully but it doesn't always happen. I love clothes, I always dressed up, wore high heels and vanity wouldn't allow me wear trousers as I thought they didn't suit me. My mother too was very fashionable and died only 11 years ago. Recently I caught sight of myself in a shop window striding along in flat shoes, leggings, anorak and I thought `if my mother could see me now!'. But it's about choice - being old is very liberating, and these days I can wear what I like."
An activist in the National Women's Council and the Irish Countrywomen's Association, Ina adds that there are too few channels for older women: "We're not mainstreamed, they don't want our input. I was on a panel recently and sat through a discussion on women's health from birth to menopause. I said `wait a minute, what about life after the menopause? We don't fall off a cliff, you know'. Women's health is about more than gynaecological health".
She suggests a medical card for all women over age 66 tied into a yearly check-up, and believes such a pro-active initiative would be cost-effective in picking up problems at an early, treatable stage.
"Older women need to find ways of being part of the policy-making process," she adds. "We have a lot to offer and it's time we stopped seeing ourselves either as victims or burdens but as a valuable resource."