On Monday this week, the Commissioner for Older People for Northern Ireland published a report, titled Ready or not: The ageing population. Its central message is that the population of Northern Ireland is getting rapidly older, and that this will have profound impacts on public services, public finances, and society more broadly. She calls for a “coordinated, long-term strategic response to population ageing”.
The prominence of demographic change has increased in recent years in policy discussions, as population projections consistently predict an increase in older people, decrease in younger people and a smaller working age population to support them. This poses difficult questions for government about the size and shape of public services, how they are delivered and how to grow the economy.
What do the numbers say?
The report paints a stark picture of how Northern Ireland’s population is set to change:
44.7% increase in the number of people aged 65 and over by 2049.
The number of people aged 85+ is set to rise by 126.1% by 2049.
There will be more people aged 65+ than people aged between 0-15 by 2027.
Those aged 0-15 are set to fall by 23.8% by 2049.
The share of the total population that is working age (aged 16-64) is projected to fall from around 62% to around 58%, a total of 83,000 fewer people.
By 2040, the number of people entering retirement will outnumber those entering working age. There will therefore be fewer people paying tax, and more older people who are likely to need more services. The “Old Age Dependency Ratio” will continue the steady decline seen over the last 25 years:
With fewer people working and contributing tax, it will be harder for government to fund services. With more people needing to access services, particularly health and social care, it will become increasingly harder to provide for citizens and meet their demands and expectations.
Politicians here have recognised this in small ways, but the report suggests actions so far have been insufficient. The Executive’s Active Ageing Strategy is over a decade old, and there is only one mention of an ageing population in its Programme for Government.
What does an ageing population mean for public services?
The report moves on to detail the potential challenges of an ageing population for a number of important public services and other aspects of life:
Health and social care: 56.8% of those ages 65+ have a limiting long-term health condition or disability. Northern Ireland is expected to have the largest increase in people with dementia across the UK, and there is a projected 32% rise in deaths requiring palliative care, the largest proportional increase in the UK.
Housing: in 2024-25, older social housing applicants were waiting an average of two years for a home. The Housing Executive will increasingly need to consider accessibility and mobility requirements in its stock. Over 5% of people ages 65+ are in the private rental market, and face the challenges of insecurity and rising rents.
The economy and older workers: the demographic projections point to a tightening labour market, with fewer people available to take up employment. The report also discusses Northern Ireland’s high levels of economic inactivity. A significant number of people aged 50-64 are inactive due to caring responsibilities for older parents, and over half of the disabled workforce in 2021 were in this age group. A House of Lords committee report called for greater supports for older workers, to enable them to stay in employment for longer rather than dropping out of the labour market due to caring responsibilities, illness or disability.
Pensions and public finances: both the number of people receiving a State Pension and the its value are due to increase at the same time as the tax base gets smaller with fewer people of working age. This creates a challenge for sustainable public finances.
Poverty: at present 8% of Northern Ireland’s pensioners are in relative poverty, and a further 8% in absolute poverty. The oldest pensioners face the greatest financial vulnerability. Those aged 65+ have the highest growth rate of any age bracket for reliance on food banks.
Transport: availability of public transport was closely linked in the report to high feelings of social isolation among older people. People aged over 60 make up 14% of public transport passengers, despite being over a quarter of the overall population, and having access to concessionary fares.
The report also considers the impacts of an ageing society on social isolation, digital exclusion, access to justice and equal access to goods, services and facilities.
Pivotal’s analysis
This report makes clear that substantial change will be needed to continue to deliver for people and to improve outcomes for citizens. As its conclusion states:
“the challenge facing Northern Ireland is not whether the population will continue to age, but whether society is prepared for the changes that are likely to follow”.
There is much further work ahead to determine what specific changes to public services will be needed to provide for an ageing population. While the Commissioner’s report this week is useful in highlighting overall population trends, much more detailed analysis will be required about how demand for specific services will increase, most obviously in health, social care, housing and transport. Health and social care represents the biggest challenge, with far higher number of people living with multiple complex conditions for longer periods.
A further question is how this increased provision will be funded by public finances that are already over-stretched. Without a doubt, new models of service delivery will be needed, with a clear focus on prevention, support for independent living, and early intervention when problems arise. Structures and practices will need to adapt; continuing with current systems will be neither affordable nor sufficient for the public. Finding answers to these questions will be fundamental to how all governments plan for the coming years, including the NI Executive.
Other authoritative works looking at demographic change on a wider scale show just how much of a financial impact an ageing society can have. The Office for Budget Responsibility's 2026 Fiscal risks and sustainability report considers spending pressures between 2020-31 until 2075-76 for the UK. It projects a 2.5% annual growth rate in health spending, of which 0.4% is attributed to demographic change. The report also estimates a 1.1% increase per year on adult social care. This is much higher than health spending as social care is much more closely linked to an ageing population. Its 2025 report suggests that an ageing population will put additional pressures of around 1.6% of GDP through increases to the state pension. While these figures are UK-wide, it shows the additional pressures an ageing population will put on public finances.
The Northern Ireland Fiscal Council's 2026 Sustainability Report also shows that Northern Ireland’s population growth is due to fall below zero in 2033 and represents a declining proportion of the population of the UK compared to England. This has significant fiscal impacts as the Barnett formula (which determines how much funding NI gets from the UK Treasury) is based on relative population shares. The Fiscal Council notes that “slower population growth compared to England reduces NI’s relative share of funding, thereby constraining NI’s public spending capacity” and suggests that this is driven by an ageing population.
Taken together, these reports highlight the importance of planning for demographic change in policy. In an already constrained fiscal environment, an ageing population puts significant upward pressures on public spending and on vital public services. The Commissioner for Older People’s report clearly sets out the demographic challenges, while the OBR and Fiscal Council reports offer just a glimpse into the financial pressures.
An ageing population is not a unique challenge to Northern Ireland, but its impacts will be particularly felt here due to the strain that our public services are already under, combined with a particularly sharp fall in our ratio of working age to pensioner population. A failure to sufficiently factor in demographic change will put more pressure on tight finances and make public service delivery all the more challenging. The key to navigating the coming years will be an early and full acknowledgement of the scale of the demographic challenge, careful planning for the increased demand for health and social care in particular, and a commitment to seek out innovative new ways to provide effective and affordable services that meet people’s needs. The Executive needs to put the ageing population at the centre of all its future planning.
