Above: Orlaith Blaney with Brian Cowen and speakers at the conference.

We shared initial findings of its PULSE research on insights into the 50+ market last week at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. There were over 300 attendees at the conference opened by An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen.

A number of international speakers, including David Bloom from Harvard and Dick Stroud from 20plus30, debated and discussed the major business opportunities in targeting this growing demographic. Brian Moore of B&Q presented on the companies age neutral hiring policy and how this has impacted on the success and growth of the B&Q business in Ireland. The amount of declared income amongst 65+ in Ireland is 6.6 billion and was a fact repeated during the day by the attendees. Psychologist, Dr Maureen Gaffney called on the Conference attendees to abandon the term retirement as it evoked a passive existence.

We presented initial findings from our PULSE Research project, ‘Over 50’s – Over the hill, or overjoyed?’ which was carried out by Leo Moore, Strategic Planning Director and Shane Doyle, Strategic Planner. We will be formally presenting these findings on 24th March at the Radisson Hotel, further details here.

Attendees at the conference included Carolyn Odgers, Strategy Director at Chemistry, with Mark Doyle of Eircom, John Boyle of Ulster Bank, Padraig Burns of QMP Publicis, Gerard O’Neill from Amarach and Stephen Vard of Design Agency, Vard Associates and a range of people from the public sector.