What's New

Dublin City will open it's arms to it's senior citizens on Senior Citizen's Day.
Simply show your Free Travel Pass on the day to avail of any these great offers:

• Free entry into Dublin Castle
• Free entry into the Book of Kells in Trinity College
• Free recitals in the Dublin Writers Museum, Parnell Square
• Free live music in the GPO
• Free live music in the ILAC Shopping Centre
• Series of free raffle draws in the ILAC Shoping Centre
• Classic films in the Screen Cinema and Irish Film Institute
• Lots of great Senior Citizen's Day discounts

Details on all events, activities and offers will be available from the Dublin Tourist Offices in O'Connell St. and Suffolk St. on the morning of 30th November.

For more information contact Dermot Kirwan, Friends of the Elderly 01 8731855.

Friends of the Elderly is currently in need of volunteers willing to visit elderly in their homes. If interested in volunteering in Dublin please click here.

Visiting volunteers commit to visiting one elderly person for about one hour a week for at least a one year period in order to form a real friendship and combat loneliness and isolation. Visiting hours are flexible and are arranged between the volunteer and elderly person. Volunteers can also help their elderly friend participate in Friends of the Elderly activities if they so wish.

Volunteers need only to be over 18 years old, have fluent English, and have enthusiasm for visiting an elderly person!

Are you musically inclined?
Do you enjoy entertaining?
Can you spare a little time to entertain the elderly in full time care?

Friends of the Elderly are developing a programme to find volunteers to bring musical entertainment to the elderly in full time care. There are hundreds of elderly people in full time care that would love a little music and song in their lives.

If you would like to entertain the elderly in your locality, please contact us.

Also - If you work with the elderly and would like to bring them some musical entertainment, check out the list of entertainers below, contact us and we will try to match you with a local volunteer entertainer.

For more information on Entertainment for the Elderly contact Dermot Kirwan at Friends of the Elderly by phone 01 8731855 or e-mail.

Let them know you care.

http://www.friendsoftheelderly.ie/postcard_form.html

This year's theme was 'Young at Heart', photos of young and old together.

http://www.friendsoftheelderly.ie/-exhibit.html

A new free weekly transport service called Shop Route, that will link the elderly with their community, has been launched on the City's Northside by Dublin City Council.

Shop Route is a free service that offers fully accessible, free door-to-door transport service to local shopping centres for older people in the North Central Area of Dublin.

Shop Route operates Monday to Friday, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. The service will be available in each neighbourhood one day a week.

The service is operated by Vantastic can be booked by ringing freephone number 1800 242703. Advance booking is essentail.

As the recession bites and the cost of home heating increases, senior citizens relying soley on the state pension are facing into a tough winter. Thousands of pensioners will be unable to adequately heat their homes and run the risk of suffering health problems as a result.

"Pensioners who live alone in poorly insulated homes are most at risk" says Dermot Kirwan of Friends of the Elderly. "The National Fuel Scheme on it's own is just not enough to protect the most vunerable of the elderly, most of them live in older houses where half of the heat escapes due to poor or non-existent insulation. The Department of Environment has a means tested Housing Aid scheme for older people which covers repairs and improvements, if it were extended to specifically include insulation and the threshold raised it would start to pay for itself."     

Friends of the Elderly are recommending a scheme Called 'Warm Front' which works well in the UK. "This is a package of insulation and heating improvements sponsored by the UK government that has proved to pay for itself after two years and brings huge savings thereafter" says Dermot. The scheme is operated locally, provides work locally, strengthens community links, saves energy and saves the elderly and the government money.  

If you can support Friends of the Elderly's campaign to get free home insulation for the elderly in need contact Dermot Kirwan at Friends of the Elderly: Phone 01 8731855.   

Friends of the Elderly are setting up a Dublin Senior Citizens Darts League, if you would like to join us for an afternoon of darts and good company, give us a ring and put your name down with Friends of the Elderly.

Commencing May 2009

Dermot Kirwan
01 873 1855

Ireland's Greatest Grandparent's Awarded!
By Friends of the Elderly and Specs Savers
Bernard and Esther Ryan from Artane, Dublin.

Bernard and Esther Ryan are Ireland's Greatest Grandparent's. Friends of the Elderly with Specs Savers awarded a three room, 2 night stay in the luxurious Killarney Lodge Hotel. They recieved their award from Gretta Gray, President of Friends of the Elderly, in the Westbury Hotel.

The Friends of the Elderly 'Life and Times' module for Transition Year students is a simple idea. We are encouraging students to write the memoirs of an elderly person, it might be one of their own grandparents, or the grandparent of a friend, or an elderly neighbour. We don't want it to be an exhaustive, detailed biography, we want it to be more a personal recollections of how it felt to be young during the 20's, 30'3 and 40's of the last century. All authors will get a certificate of merit. There will be regional and national awards, and the best will be filmed for RTE. 

Contact Dermot Kirwan for more information, Phone 01 873 1855.

Sean McGuiness, longtime saxophonist throughout the Dublin area in various
venues and now playing for Friends of the Elderly's Wednesday Club, with his
transition year student biographers from St. Paul's CBS.

Tommy Fox,a master of ceremoniesand popular Dublin entertainer, and his transition
year student biographers from St. Paul's CBS.