Mr. Mervyn Taylor:

Alone will obviously have a view and I hope they will come in. I do not wish to be amusing about it but I do not know why we have to call them "day centres". Many people drop down to the pub, but the pub will be closed. There are an awful lot more pubs being closed. These are the centre of the community in a way that people do not actually appreciate. It is not all about alcohol binging. Seriously, they are actually day centres. They are community centres and many of them are involved in different ways. For some of them, nobody knows who exactly they are linked to, because some of them are GAA, some of them are churches and some of them are everything. I would say that a good third of the people on the committees are atheist but that does not matter. The fact of the matter is that they are there and they are being used.

I would be cautious about just saying "day centres for old people". The key thing is that we need to rethink our idea of public services. Rather than just being Meals on Wheels - which is important - what about getting the wheels under the people to come so they can actually socialise and so they can get linked in with citizens' information? This is the sort of support that tackles loneliness and it also allows people to realise just how resilient they are. Other generations can come in and learn from that.

We have lots of buildings but it is a question of looking for money for buildings and day centres that need to meet these criteria at a very high level. However, the world does not operate like that. Why do they have to meet some HIQA-like standard? Many older people live their lives dropping in and out of all sorts of houses that do not necessarily meet HIQA's standards, or anybody else's standards. Let us just think about the actual engagement with one another and where that can happen. That is a day centre. We just need to rethink how services and outcomes-----