Professor Desmond O'Neill:

It is. When I speak to students I use the term "geroeugenics". President Higgins made some interesting remarks when he opened the Mercers Institute for Successful Aging. We know of his interest in ethics. The President observed that one of the dangers of the trope "successful aging" - with which I am less than happy myself - is that it might carry within it the seeds of a vision of the continuation of a healthy middle age rather than a coming to terms with our vulnerabilities. Without wishing to be a sentimentalist or a Pollyanna, the late Irish psychologist, Paul Kennedy, did extraordinary work showing how personal growth in people with spinal cord injury was enormous. I see people growing; I see relationships being forged.

Kirk Douglas had a stroke when he was in his 80s. The title of his book refers to it as his "Stroke of Luck". Without sentimentalising it, and it has to be the person themselves who says this, Douglas discusses how it made him rethink his values and family and forge bonds. Arthur Kleinman, a very celebrated psychiatrist discusses caring and how hugely important caring is to our moral development and to monetise, reject, instrumentalise or introduce the spirit of the market place to care and compassion will lead to people feeling that they are a burden. We must not make people feel that they are a burden because they have a disability, whether they are 23 or 93 years.