Dr. Lucia Carragher:

I reinforce what Mr. Bond has said. The research centre is an applied research centre. That gives us a unique opportunity in the sense that we work in academia but we also work in the community so we are working directly with older people. We would have conversations with older people and would be in positions with older people that other organisations would not be in so readily.

We would be right in the homes. We would be in the homes of older people who would not perhaps be in age-friendly structures, which would be wonderful but, as Ms McGuigan stated, one does not get everybody there. We would be in the position where we would see the issues and talk to the people who are not in those structures for all sorts of reasons. In County Louth and through the Age Friendly Ireland structure, we have got good at supporting and identifying what is wrong in the system and supporting it more effectively but we are not radically changing things in any way; it is more a case of making things that are in place work more efficiently rather than providing new models.

Through research and collaboration with partners at international conferences, we hear the conversations of colleagues. At the gerontological society conference last year in San Francisco, it was agreed at one of our meetings on some of the presentations from a number of different countries that in 20 to 30 years time we will probably look back and say, for example, in relation to nursing homes: "Did we actually tolerate that for so long?" There is this whole drive towards being more creative and having new models. Sharing resources is needed but so too, as Mr. Bond states, is introducing and testing new models and moving on because that is where all countries will go, only at different paces.