Mary Kenny
Health Minister Simon Harris Ireland has been named one of the most equal societies in the world, but one remaining field of inequality, we are told, is between the young and the old. About 60% of the wealth of the State is in the hands of those over 55, even though this age-group is just less than a quarter of the whole population.
The over-65s are described as the wealthiest Irish group, according to a report done by Goodbody Stockbrokers.
This asymmetry between young and old is mostly sourced in property acquisition. It’s true enough that anything based on “bricks and mortar” seldom loses value and those who acquired their property when the market values were more accessible have greatly benefited. Moreover, the growth in the Irish economy has also been a marked advantage for the pensioner age group.
This duality is seen in other societies, too, where the “baby-boom” generation (born after 1945) are sometimes described as “spoilt” and “selfish”, for having grown up in lucky and mainly peaceable times, when materially everything got better, from education to medicine to cheap travel.
But values are relative, and if older people seem to be in clover now – though not all are – then it’s fair to remember that they didn’t always have such a cushy time when they were young and starting out.
We grew up without central heating, power showers, cheap travel abroad and even telephones could be something of a luxury. We turned off lights to save electricity (presuming we had electricity), considered a meal in a restaurant a big treat, and were told that if we couldn’t afford something “then do without”.
Younger people today certainly have their challenges – particularly in acquiring their own home – but they also have amazing advantages.
“Equality” isn’t something that belongs to just one moment in time: things often even out over the years, and what’s lost on the roundabouts may be won on the swings.
Health minister must take responsibility
As my dear sister died from cervical cancer, I can identify with the grief and anger of those families who have lost mothers, sisters or daughters to this distressing disease – especially if there was an erroneous diagnosis in the first place.
But such medical mishaps don’t just happen in Ireland. My sister lived in New York city and she was a follower of the practice of Chinese medicine. But she wasn’t warned by the providers of this alternative therapy that unusual bleeding should be checked out by conventional medical care. I think she also feared the cost of seeing a regular doctor in New York. By the time she did seek medical help, it was really too late. She might have lived a lot longer with an earlier diagnosis.
The Irish misdiagnoses surely constitutes both a tragedy and a national scandal and it is up to Minister Simon Harris to take ultimate responsibility for the failings of the system and make very sure it doesn’t happen again.
A tome well worth reading
The historian Lady Antonia Fraser has written a much-anticipated new history of British Catholics from the penal period up to Emancipation, published next month, entitled The King and the Catholics – the Fight for Rights.
It’s said to be “a technicolour account of the extraordinary moment when the British people…overcame a particularly toxic bout of religious intolerance”.
Lady Antonia, mother of six, and, at 85, now grandmother of many more, is descended from Robert Peel, her great-great-great grandfather, who supported Emancipation (after whom the police were dubbed ‘peelers’). The Duke of Wellington, who came to support Emancipation having initially opposed it, was her great-great-great-uncle.
She’s a “loyal and committed” Catholic who attends Mass regularly at the beautiful Farm Street church in Mayfair, the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
Her second husband was the late Harold Pinter, who was so devoted to her that, although a Jewish atheist, he agreed to have their marriage convalidated in a Catholic church in Kensington.
The Pakenhams are a tribe of historians: her father Lord Longford, her mother Elizabeth Longford and her brother Thomas Pakenham of Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath – all history boffins. And her sister-in-law, Valerie Pakenham, has just published a study of the letters of Maria Edgeworth, reviewed last week in this newspaper.