Stop rolling out exclusively online services, says Liz Dunne

Liz Dunne, Bray Family Resource Centre, gave the views from workshops held in advance of the Social Inclusion Forum, held in Croke Park, Dublin, in May. She focused on older people saying, “For the first time in history, we have older people who are actually finding themselves homeless. They can’t afford to pay the rent.”

From what she and others were seeing more older people are now dependent on food banks.

“They are the people who should be enjoying the fruits of their labour, after all those years of work, and they’re reduced to putting their hand out.
“It’s like food banks have become mainstream,” she added.

The cost of a shopping basket has shot up in recent years, along with utilities, and pension increases did not match inflation. She wanted to see the state pension increased again and called for mandatory retirement to be abolished.

“People are now finding that they can’t afford to live on a pension. They need to be allowed to choose to work for longer.

“Women are doubly at risk of poverty, because a lot of women would have gone back to work maybe later in life, maybe not worked at all,” she added.

Liz said that older people – indeed everyone – should be able to access services in person or online, or both, but not exclusively online.

“People are excluded by having to go online to do everything. Think about someone that’s 60, 70, 80, and all of a sudden they’ve got to go fill in forms – online. I struggled with that myself. It is one huge barrier for them. They need to have people that can actually talk and not machines.

“It puts them at risk, because they’re going into shops and post offices and places like that to get people, members of staff, to help them to do what they need to do. It’s very unfair,” she said. “What people are saying is that they want more face to face services,” said Liz.