A resource centre to provide health and social facilities for ageing Irish emigrants is urgently needed in Coventry, according to a report from Rehab Care. Fifteen per cent of Coventry's pensioners are Irish, and many have lost contact with home and have failed to integrate with the host community.
The report was published yesterday at the Dublin launch of the Rehab Exile Care Initiative. Mr Mike Stagg of the Coventry Mayo Association, 40 years a carpenter in Coventry, said: "Coventry has been good to me, but we are forgotten by the people we left in Ireland and neglected by those we worked for."
Coventry contains the largest Irish community in Britain outside London. The chief executive of Rehab Care, Ms Angela Kerins, described Coventry's Irish as "economic refugees".
They had left Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s in search of work. Not only had they not been a burden on the Irish State, but many had sent money home to relatives.
"When they need support most they should not be abandoned by the Celtic Tiger they helped create", she said.
The survey shows 49 per cent of the target group, aged 50 and over, has urgent health needs. Almost three-quarters of those with urgent needs were ill and two-thirds had a disability.
Mortality rates among the men were 30 per cent above the averages for England and Wales, and the mortality rate for women was 10 per cent higher than the national average.