Terry Prone has admitted that attitudes towards older people and ageism is worsening in Ireland.
The writer spoke to RSVP Magazine this about the social landscape in Ireland and the attitudes towards older people, and women in particular.
She said that she is contacted every week by women worried about being pushed out of their workplace due to their age.
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"The Kaiser who invented the old age pension has a lot to answer for," Terry told us. "Yeah, the OAP keeps us afloat. But it also established the idea of retiring at 65 as an inevitability. Which was grand when people were lucky to live to that age. Now, people in good health are living to their eighties and nineties and the majority have been forced out of the workplace.
"Yep, the attitudes towards older people are getting worse. Or maybe the attitudes to older women in particular. Every week, I am contacted for help by working women in their late forties and fifties – no kidding – who are convinced they’re going to be made redundant by their employer because of their age. Half the fillers and Botox administered in this country are to protect against workplace ageism.
"Let people work as long as they like as long as they’re physically and mentally able to."
Terry pinpointed some changes in society as a whole, as she said that anger and hatred are more prolific in our culture than ever, especially online.
"The biggest change has been the growth of 'anger' and hate," she said. "'Anger' is a poor word for bad temper, freely expressed, and Internet platforms have created a situation where the thoughts of the valueless and the nasty can be published and in the process, create a dangerous circle of reward: “likes” for spewing venom and the feeling of being reinforced by an Internet tribe.
"The platform owners have known for years that engagement is fuelled by hatred and anger. Their business is built on it and governments all over the world have failed to control them."
However, she did stress that people wear their rose-coloured glasses when thinking of the past, as she believes there have always been deep rooted issues within our society and it was never the warm, welcoming place that people like to remember it as.
" Look, I remember what it was like 20 or 30 years ago, and warm and loving it bloody wasn’t," said Terry. "That was when a woman had to repeatedly go to court to establish her right to contraception after her doctors had told her she was likely to die if she had another baby. That was when gay people were beaten up and murdered over their sexuality."
She added: " But, back then, one great thing existed. The kindness of strangers. People who took risks when they saw bad things being done. And you know what? The kindness of strangers is around us to this day, in every community and from people of every religion and none. It’s a wonderful permanent human trait."
You can read Terry's full interview as well as interviews with five other famous faces on the topic in the October issue of RSVP, on shelves now.
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