Ms Máiread Hayes:

One of the things that we would say has been good about austerity is that we have managed to preserve inter-generational solidarity. We have managed not to fracture it. That is a credit to older and younger people and is something we should all give ourselves a clap on the back for. What I am seeing are the social transfers that older people are giving. One of the people in the Visitors Gallery was telling me about what he was giving last week. He left a meeting that we had because he had to take somebody some place as part of the family. While he was doing that, he got a telephone call to say one grandchild had cracked her head at school and had to be collected. Believe it or not, he was only just telling me this, I did not know the issue would come up today. He then got a call to say another grandchild had fainted at school and he had to go again. I do not know how one would value that or what price one would put on it. That is what older people have stepped up to do in the crisis.

Mr. Timmins has handled the anxiety factor. One of the difficulties is that people cannot be assured that a service is available for them. We are more in touch with the pulse of what is happening now in 2014. A lot of the research and statistics are from 2012. We have members who are 55 years of age and are on jobseeker's payments. They cannot get work. We were selling tickets to raise funds in Dún Laoghaire shopping centre, because we are all experiencing no funds into our organisations. A lady told me that she was made redundant eight years ago at age 55. She said she had an option to take a pension but she decided she would get another job but eight years later she has not got a job. She lives in an apartment where she has to pay €1,500 for charges and the local property tax. She has €20 for left for food every week. I asked her if she had fuel allowance and she said she would not like to claim it. I told her she was entitled to it and should claim it. I mentioned to her about the community welfare officer but she did not know what that was.

We are very conscious that there are people who are classed in the UN and EU as being older, over 50, who are unemployed and who are getting €188. That is why we have asked for the older people who are not on the State pension to get an extra €5. When the question was raised by the newly-appointed Minister for Health, Deputy Leo Varadkar about whether it was better to have €5 or better services, a large number of people told us they would like the €5. Age Action and ourselves were at a session in the Aviva stadium where the new Minister for Health was speaking to the public when this issue was raised.

The Minister of State with responsibility for disability, older people, equality and mental health, Deputy Kathleen Lynch said that a new scheme was adapted in Cork where people were assured that when they needed the service they would get it, rather than booking for the service.

They now know that they will get the service when they want it, but what is currently happening is that everybody fears that they will not get the service.

I also want to say, in answer to some of the questions that were raised earlier, that we do not want to continue doing things the same way. We see situations affecting how older people are living now due to bad planning and we would be very upset if some of the new legislation that is to be introduced does not take account of aging and increasing frailty and disabilities. We do not want to see any places for older people, or for younger people, being built that do not take account of accessibility for showering, etc. Many people do not have to adapt their house if they can use a chair lift, as one of my colleagues in the audience does. I asked her whether she had to adapt the ground floor of her house and she said that she did not because she had a toilet downstairs already and she could use a chair lift. The measures taken do not, therefore, have to be expensive, but we must agree as a society what they are. When the Government talks to us seriously about that, we can look at the options.