Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

This is positive ageing week and I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise some key issues concerning older people. Yesterday I attended the launch of the mid-term review of the positive ageing cross-Border project in my home town of Monaghan. The project is the result of a strategic partnership between two of the largest older people's organisations in Ireland, Age Action Ireland and Age Concern Northern Ireland. It is an excellent example of what can be done on the ground to bring people together across the Border and to facilitate them collectively to enhance their lives as individuals and members of the community. The report of the positive ageing cross-Border project states that older people living in the Border counties, North and South, have failed to benefit from the peace dividend. Many are living in isolated areas with poor public transport and dwindling services. The report is based on consultation since January of this year with older people's groups from the nine counties straddling the Border.

Positive ageing cross-Border programme development manager, Barry O'Keeffe, has stated that although many of these people have remained in their Border region community throughout the worst of times and have solidly contributed to the life of their communities, now as we look to a new peaceful future on this island, older people in the region seem to have lost out on the peace dividend. Both Age Action Ireland and Age Concern Northern Ireland call on politicians on both sides of the Border to come together in collaborative cross-Border co-operation to seek solutions to these issues.

The first and most critical issue cited by Age Action and Age Concern is the pressing need for rural public transport. They have urged all political parties to unite and respond by expanding existing rural public transport services and taking a more integrated approach to rural and cross-Border transport issues.

Age Concern Northern Ireland director of community services, Alan Herron, said rural communities were witnessing a decline in rural living marked by the withdrawal of key services including post offices, banks, pharmacies, shops and transport services. He added that the social consequences of failing to significantly address these issues in rural Border regions will be grave.

Cross-Border forums attended by older people were organised in Monaghan, Newry, Omagh, Letterkenny and Carrick-on-Shannon. At those forums the project found that poor transport and road infrastructure in the region exacerbated rural isolation and rural depopulation.

Everyone has rightly welcomed the recent introduction of the all-Ireland free travel pass. That is something we in Sinn Féin, in common with older people's groups, have advocated for many years. However, many older people in rural areas still have no way of accessing free travel in practise because the public transport infrastructure is simply not there. Only today an issue was brought to my attention concerning a pensioner in my constituency who has had to repeatedly cancel medical appointments because he does not have his own transport and cannot avail of an appropriate public service. Similar issues which present from time to time reflect the reality on the ground. We do not have the necessary public transport infrastructure to meet people's needs.

Over-centralisation of transport infrastructure in Dublin and Belfast has had a negative impact on rural peripheral and isolated Border regions. People in rural Border areas suffer a double disadvantage as both their rural location and the division of services by the Border isolates them further. Many older people are faced with declining local public and private services and weakened community and family supports. For these reasons I urge the Minister for Transport and the Marine to initiate an effective public transport system for rural communities, especially so that older people can fully avail of free travel passes to help access essential services and to make possible more active and healthier lifestyles. The Minister also needs to co-ordinate this enhanced rural public transport system with his counterpart in the Executive in the Six Counties.

I want to echo the motto of the positive ageing cross-Border project which states, "Age has no borders". This is surely a reminder that, irrespective of our age or where we live, we are all ageing and must all be concerned with these issues regardless of man-made frontiers and generation gaps. I hope the Minister of State will have some good news for those who are listening.

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