Discrimination is defined as distinguishing differences between things or treating someone as inferior based on their race, sex, national origin, age or other characteristics.

Elderly people in Ireland faces daily discrimination in various aspect in their lives not only in employment but also in education , health and insurance and most people of our community aren’t aware of whats been happening

Reasons for discrimination against the elderly

Ageism is a prejudice against older people because they are old

Elderly and youthful employees sometimes experience age discrimination in the workplace. Ageism, is stereotyping and discriminating against individuals or groups on the basis of their age. Employers are generally not allowed to hire, fire, promote, or decide an employee’s compensation based on their age.

Ways to reduce discrimination

1. younger and older people should intergrate more in society to lean from the elderly.
2. old people should be given the same equality as everybody else.
3. also they should have the rights to homecare servises like other countries.

Examples of discrimination

• 67 year old man is looking for a job in the newspaper, he sees a advertisement saying ‘Looking for a young, energetic candidate for sales assistant’. This is an example is discrimination as the person who wrote the advertisement was being ageist.
• The FAS scheme and back of education programs are not open to people over the age of 65 years old. This effects the individuals self esteem as they are not given the chance as everyone else. They may loose hope, become depressed and they deteriorate and many of them find themselves on the margins of society and don’t feel important.

Solutions of Discrimination

• Inter-generational- This is for the young and older generation to be more involved together
• Older generation need the same equality as everyone else
• People need to educated more on what discrimination is and what ageism is