Mr. Seán Moynihan:

Unfortunately, that report on loneliness is a European report and it is a heat map that goes across the whole life course. To take the loneliness task force, which we supported and led, this had everybody from ourselves and Jigsaw to everything else, both young and old. I spoke earlier about the fractures of life, for example, retirement, bereavement or poor health and how they can lead people into loneliness. It is also that some of the services and interactions we had daily, have disappeared. Some of the supports have moved online and the digital age has affected younger people, who are less connected. I noted that primary schools produced a report two weeks ago indicating that children under ten have fewer friends now than they had a decade ago. We are seeing that loneliness come through in all age groups. Unfortunately, it is something that is again, recognised in the programme for Government and two Government strategies. Ultimately, we need to try to get plans and actions in place. For us, we are trying to set up a research network. All the NGOs, both young and old, are trying to be part of that conversation to produce evidence-based information and to try to produce the movement that we need.

I will take a step back for a second on things like the rent-a-room scheme. In our submission, we identified that ageing at home is about more than just health. It is the physical environment and the social connectivity, as the Chair has highlighted in respect of-ALONE. In some ways, again around housing, we do not necessarily include the needs of older people in the housing conversation. Housing is an issue that is affecting the economy and home care workers coming into the country. It affects everything and is expensive. Traditionally, there has been a high level of house ownership, so we leave aside what the housing needs and choices are. As a result, and we mentioned this earlier, we are trying to produce housing with support in that gap. That is, where people can remain in the community and choose alternatives. When we talk about rightsizing, we talk about how older people should rightsize but we never talk about what types of houses we are going to build for them in order that they can rightsize in their community.

What are the targets to build them? We have rightsizing policies within the Department without any numbers to back them up to say we will build those units. With regard to building those types of units, 15% of older people say they would rightsize if there was a choice within 1 km or 2 km of where they live, which would be a wonderful opportunity for them to move into high BER-rated housing that is cost-effective. We created the policy without turning around and saying we will build any of these units so ultimately it will not happen. The only people who will rightsize are those who have substantial value in their housing because then the gap between the cost of buying an apartment or something that is big enough makes sense. Other than that, for most people who are living in a three-bedroom semi-detached or terraced house it just makes no sense. It will never happen.

Grant schemes relating to housing were mentioned and also housing with support. Ultimately, we have a whole generation of older people. The percentage of older people in private rented accommodation went up by 86% since the latest census. How will we pay the rent when people retire? What will happen? In some ways, that is as big a question. It has been proven we will be able to pay the pension for a wider cohort but a deep dive has not been done into the numbers to see whether we will be able to meet the housing needs of people. Schemes such as rent a room have a part to play. We need more programmes that are intergenerational across that. There is a huge level of older people who can still contribute wisdom and knowledge to younger people. There are also situations where there is under-occupancy and if we can provide for that in a safe way, we should provide and encourage it. It is part of the wider cohort of the housing needs of older people. For older people it can sometimes sound like what can be done to solve the problems of younger people's housing. We all know that most parents and grandparents would do anything to get their children, nephews, nieces or grandchildren housing but most people just own the house they live in and would nearly need to make themselves homeless to help out any more than they have.