The Grass IS Greener for Irish Youth

Ireland’s youth, a mere afterthought yet again. That was the sentiment gleaned from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s comments before the festive period. The Fine Gael leader quipped that the “grass looks greener” when it comes to the recent surge in emigration amongst this nation’s youth.

The comments, which also included the astonishingly misinformed line that when heading abroad “you’re not going to find rents that are lower… [apart from] rural areas or third and fourth-tier cities”, is yet another indicator that the Government is burying its proverbial head in the sand when it comes to the challenges facing Ireland’s youth.

The recently appointed Taoiseach was quite literally proved wrong in the same news cycle, with a Daft.ie rental report detailing how rents in Ireland have increased by a record 14.1% since this time last year, along with the concerning statistic that there are 75% fewer properties available for rent than in 2019.

It is trends in the housing market such as these which make the figures in September’s Red C poll more understandable. In the poll over 70% of respondents aged 18-24 said they were contemplating moving abroad because “they think they would enjoy a better quality of life elsewhere”.

Our local representatives are supposed to work towards solving the gravest issues faced by their constituents and are paid handsomely – particularly in these fiscally compromised times – to do so. However, in terms of both action and rhetoric, those that enjoy the elegant working environment of Leinster House appear to be more concerned with creating populist soundbites in the Dáil chamber as they become embroiled in daily political point-scoring exercises.

Ireland is a small place and anecdotal evidence cannot be discounted. In my own life, my group of friends has been decimated by the requirement to emigrate in search of an affordable and fulfilling standard of living. In fact, just last month, I said goodbye to my childhood best friend as he travelled “down-under” in the hopes of escaping the incessant struggle that is being a young person in today’s Ireland.

From Vancouver, to Abu Dhabi and virtually everywhere in between, Ireland’s youth are leaving in their droves. We have not just left one pandemic behind, but rather swapped it for another iteration – one of emigration. The COVID zoom calls have been replaced by emigration Facetimes and the outdoor meals replaced by a hopefully annual reunion dinner.

Yes, as a nation we have always been a people with a strong will to explore and find our way in the world, but akin to the days of the famine or the economic hardships of the 1980’s, the mass exodus of our youth is no longer a choice – it is a necessity.

I myself am a Masters student at University College Dublin, and I can see no other way that my degree culminates other than with a one-way ticket to a foreign land. When faced with the Sophie’s choice of beginning to rent at rates which will see you unable to save up for a house deposit, or live at home with your parents until your mid 30’s to spend €500k+ on a cramped 3-bed terrace house; you are left frantically googling Qantas or Etihad’s air fares.

Taking a more macrocosmic overview of the situation is all the more worrying, when you consider the potential brain-drain that Ireland is facing. With over 60% of Irish 25-34 year-olds possessing tertiary level education, well above the EU average, we as a nation boast one of the most qualified and knowledgeable workforces in the Western world.

Our high-level of education is a key explanatory factor as to why Ireland has become the self-professed “tech capital of Europe”, in addition of course to our “lenient” relation- ship with the taxation of foreign corporations. However, should this highly educated youth continue to abandon these shores, the companies we built our post-2008 economy on may themselves look to alternative hosts.

This past year, for the first time since the Famine, the Republic’s population limped over the 5 million mark in official census figures, but at the current trajectory of departures, the number of inhabitants may decrease for the first time since 1991- a worrying but unsurprising possibility.

The reasoning behind why Ireland’s youth are yet again being overlooked by the political powers-that-be is simple. Older people vote, they put these politicians into power and it is their interests they serve. Pension reform and energy subsidies are of course credible issues to discuss and implement policy change on. However, they should not be done at the expense of, but rather in addition to creating a coherent housing and cost-of-living strategy for Ireland’s young people.

Perhaps though, I am asking too much of our burdened government. To borrow a line from Mr. Chomsky, “it is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”

It is patently evident to Ireland’s youth that we are at a breaking point and the government must act now, or risk seeing the land of a thousand welcomes become that of a thousand goodbyes.