Elderly ‘sleep in afternoon to keep warm’
OLDER people across Ireland are being left with no choice but to wear dressing gowns all day and sleep during the afternoon just to keep warm as a result of continuous rising costs of living.
John Hannon, 68, has revealed the significant cutbacks he is making in his day-to-day life as pensions are not in line with the cost of living.
Mr Hannon, who lives on his own in a Dublin council flat, suffers from arthritis so keeping warm is essential to staying healthy and mobile.
He said: ‘I just cut back a bit on food. I don’t have breakfast in the morning because it takes a lot of milk for Weetabix or cornflakes. I wait until about 12p, and I might put on a few
‘I just cut back a bit on food’
sausages and a bit of bread, to fill the gap.’
He also told RTÉ’s Today With Claire Byrne that he cannot afford to put the heating on throughout the day so he will go to sleep at around 2.30pm every day to keep warm.
‘I do feel that the Government has it all wrong,’ he said.
He added that the Government doesn’t understand how a person lives on a pension or social welfare.’
Christina Carson, an 81-yearold from the midlands, also shared her struggles, saying she gets extremely cold in her home, which has gaps in all the windows and a hole in the front door. She said: ‘I’m frozen, I do suffer from very bad circulation… I’m sitting here on my own, I have a dressing gown on me and a blanket around me. I have it on all the time to keep warm.’
Ms Carson has an almostempty fridge containing only the essentials. She referred to herself as a ‘miser’ who can survive on bread and milk. She explained: ‘Food bills have just gone crazy – it’s not just food bills, everything has gone up.’
Both Mr Hannon and Ms Carson are grateful for the help they receive from Alone – an organisation that helps older people – and have called on the Government to act now.
Mr Hannon said he wouldn’t have a bad word to say about Alone, which sends taxis to him and even let him sing at the charity’s latest event.
Alone CEO Seán Moynihan said: ‘The cost of living is becoming extremely difficult for older people, particularly as they are reliant on the State pension, which is currently below the poverty line.’
Mr Moynihan called the crisis a ‘perfect storm’ due to rising prices for food, healthcare and housing. He said: ‘We feel that older people coming to us have used up the wriggle room they might have had in the pension – they have used up the easy low-hanging fruit of choices they had.’