Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Sean Connery is regularly selected as one of the sexiest actors in the world. He is even older than I am, although I do not aspire to be him. However, this is a serious issue, which concerns integrating the fact that our population is ageing into a single view of society, which is not made up of younger and older people but which recognises that older people will frequent the same places as younger people and older people can start from the presumption that these things happen all through life and can be replicated all through life.

One of the things that fascinates me about our current society is the extraordinary ignorance of the marketplace. There is a large population between 55 and 70 years of age consisting of people with extraordinary amounts of disposable income, yet the market has decided that the demographic to chase is the 15 to 24 age group, who have not got a bob when compared with the older age group. I do not wish to ignore those who are in deprivation, but the average middle class citizen in his or her late 50s has far more disposable income than the average 15 to 24 year old, who generally is still in college, can afford to drink and not much more.

It is extraordinary that there is such a limited focus on this older age group. It may be due to the fact that older people are not easily persuaded to part with their money, but that does not mean they will sit on it forever. Most of my friends are in my age group and they have no intention of leaving vast sums of money to what they regard as children who are well looked after. They will not be seduced by bland advertising into buying things they do not need, or be persuaded to buy labels that have become the fashion of the moment. Nevertheless, older people can be persuaded to spend money on a product that they want, will use and that has a point to it. However, they will not be persuaded to buy a car every year, rather than every two years.

To combat ageism, there is a need to integrate. There is a need not to have a view of aging or youth, but to have a view of a society which is made up in an holistic way of all sorts of people with different limits and abilities. We must make sure that there are no little categories into which we squeeze people.