Mr. Justin Moran:

There are two issues here, the work Age Action is doing on a daily basis to try to improve the services and protections that are available to older people, and the programmes and policies the Government is implementing. That work will continue but in the long term we believe a convention on the rights of older people would be very helpful in terms of protecting those human rights. Once the convention is passed, and obviously there is no draft text for the convention at present, the issue then would be to hold the Government to account in delivering on those commitments. For example, Ireland has made commitments regarding another international treaty, the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. Ireland has signed and ratified that treaty. We can use that treaty mechanism to try to hold Ireland to account in delivering on those rights and to put attention on the national and global scale of the failures or successes of the Government in terms of delivering on those human rights commitments. In terms of a practical difference, if a person in Cork, for example, cannot get home help, an international convention, if it was ratified tomorrow, would not necessarily change that, but we believe a convention would be very important in terms of changing it over the long term and challenging issues of ageism and discrimination and giving us something which we can use to hold future Governments to account.