Ireland

October 31, 2007

Most elderly people in Ireland issued with personal alarms ring them just because they are lonely, a leading security company said Wednesday in a reflection of the country's rapidly changing family demographics.

Community groups began issuing hand-held alarms in the mid-1980s to senior citizens living on their own, particularly in rural areas, following a rise in robberies and assaults targeting the isolated elderly. The alerts also help a lone person summon emergency medical help.

But a conference marking Community Alert Awareness Week has been told that the majority of ringers these days simply cannot reach a family member and are desperate for human contact.

"They're just lonely," said Gerry Bunting, managing director of Task Security and Community Care, Ireland's longest-established provider of personal alarms. "They will have given us a list of family members' contact details, but they're not reachable, and they think we can wave a magic wand and get in touch with them."

Even a generation ago, Ireland was a predominantly rural society where inheritance of land tied at least one son to the farm who, together with other siblings, provided stability for elderly parents.

Since the mid-1990s, the Celtic Tiger economic boom has fueled rapid urbanization and selloffs of farms for property development. An explosion in low-cost air connections and foreign travel, rise in marriage breakdown and decline in family size all have contributed to a situation where family supports weaken and grandparents end up alone.

Bunting said senior citizens are increasingly ringing the alarms, most commonly at night, simply to talk to the emergency official who answers at Task's call center in Portrane, a suburb north of Dublin.

He said the center fields 700 to 800 alarms a week, and more than 80 percent come from isolated elderly people wanting to talk. Bunting said many alarm-ringers were "pretending to see if it works but then start chatting to the operators."

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