As many as one in three people may already be aged 65 or over in some rural areas as population shifts into towns and cities create a demographic time bomb, an expert on ageing trends warned yesterday. 

Also the disenfranchisement felt by the country’s rural aged, particularly in the western regions, would become more acute without adequate investment in services and infrastructure, said Prof Eamon O’Shea, director of the new Irish Centre for Social Gerontology (ICSG). 

The new €3 million centre at the JE Cairnes Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway, the first of its type in Ireland, will examine the economic and social aspects of Ireland’s elderly people. 

Prof O’Shea said the country faced huge demographic changes into the future — one-in-four Irish people would be over the age of 65 by 2050 compared to the current figure of one in 10. But, he said, Ireland still had plenty of time to prepare itself for a larger ‘greying’ population. 

“Compared to other European countries Ireland now has a low percentage of the population who are aged over 65 years. We know that it is going to change and we now have some breathing space to get things right.

“Older people have too often been seen as drawing on public resources rather than as net contributors to society,” he said. 

Prof O’Shea also believes the current mandatory retirement age should be scrapped so that men and women could work for as long as they wanted. 

“We should think of older people as net contributors to society, not only through their involvement in economic life but through their involvement in civic, cultural and family life,” he pointed out. 

We also had to make sure that the support services provided for older people were what they wanted to enable them to live independently for as long as possible. 

Prof O’Shea said the ICSG, which is funded through a combination of public and private funding, would seek to both inform and influence attitudes to and expectations of older people as well as exploring innovative ways to ensure that older people play full part in society at all levels. 

“Each of us has a role to play in ensuring that we include older people in social and community initiatives,” Prof O’Shea said. 

The ICSG recently co-produced a research report funded by the National Council on Ageing and Older people on the quality of life for older people in long-stay facilities and is currently completing a further report for the council on the quality of life of older people living at home with a chronic illness or disability. 

From September the centre will also offer Ireland’s first diploma in social gerontology.