Diarmaid Ferriter: There is something devastating about the words ‘Ireland doesn’t have a place for me’

Collectively, pre-budget submissions from different interest groups suggest feelings of betrayal and disappointment, but also deep engagement with the possibilities for a small, wealthy country to fix what is broken. In June, the Department of Finance published 51 of last year’s submissions, a “representative sample”, with the aim to “increase transparency around the pre-budget process and allow an insight into the many demands made of the Minister for Finance in the run-up to the budget each year”. It received more than 800 submissions, including from Social Justice Ireland (SJI), which emphasised increased global volatility but also “long-standing challenges that stretch back ... housing, homelessness, poverty and inadequate social infrastructure ... We are wealthier than at any time in our history, and yet almost 630,000 people are living below the poverty line.” SJI emphasises, as do other submissions, the “common good” and the need for unprecedented corporate tax receipts being invested wisely, including in relation to energy transformation. Some of the submissions focus on the need to plan for an ageing population. According to Census 2022, there were 1,048,985 people aged over 60 living in Ireland, an increase of 19.7 per cent on Census 2016, while Central Statistics Office projections show the population aged 65+ will increase by 70 per cent by 2040; an increase of more than half a million people. In its submission last year, the National Federation of Pensioners Association called for a commissioner for ageing and older people. At the other end of the age scale, the publication this week of the findings of the Red C poll for the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) were striking, given that 68 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds say they are considering a move abroad, and 71 per cent believe life would be better elsewhere. It was published alongside NYCI’s pre-budget submission calling for changes to the jobseekers’ allowance, the abolition of sub-minimum rates of pay, and free public transport for under-25s.READ MOREThe pessimism revealed in the survey suggests a sundered social contract. While there is a danger of taking these findings too literally, given that this is about consideration rather than concrete planning, the survey undoubtedly exposes a great gulf between the younger and older sections of our population. The need to plan for an ageing population is critical, but many older people had the advantage of being able to put down secure roots through home ownership. That landscape has changed; home ownership rates were over 80 per cent in the early 1990s, declining to 66 per cent in 2022. Research by the Economic and Social Research Institute highlighted that more than 60 per cent of those born in the 1960s lived in a house owned by them or their partner; for those born in the early 1980s it was just 32 per cent. This would explain why social policy academic and now Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne’s history of Irish housing policy, Gaffs (2022), was dedicated “to the children we have failed as a nation”, focusing on a locked-out generation Y aged from their 20s to early 40s, unlike the generation X and before them, the baby boomers.[ The Irish emigrant journey now: Graduate from college, spend 10 years abroad, move homeOpens in new window ]By 2022, there were 522,486 adults aged 18 years and over who were living with their parents, a 14 per cent increase from 2016 and a 19 per cent increase since 2011. In Ireland, according to separate data by Eurostat, 68 per cent of adults aged 25-29 were living at home in 2022, almost double the figure of 2012. Comparative figures for Denmark revealed that only 4.4 per cent of that age group still lived at home; the figure in the Netherlands was 17 per cent.In 1989, historian Joe Lee in his book Ireland: 1912-1985, a searing evaluation of Irish “performance”, raised hackles when he asserted “few people anywhere in the world have been so prepared to scatter their children around the world in order to preserve their own living standards”. This implied them being pushed out. Emigration, however, was never that black and white. When he was minister for finance in 2012, Michael Noonan caused controversy when he suggested emigration was “not being driven by unemployment at home, it’s being driven by a desire to see another part of the world and live there”. He clarified his remarks to say he meant it could be “a free choice of lifestyle”. He was conscious of his own family situation, with three of his grown-up children living abroad by choice.[ The ‘Irish emigrant’ is no longer a simple concept. Meet the new diasporaOpens in new window ]That remains relevant, but it is, unfortunately, only part of the picture, and many younger people will feel Lee’s evaluation is relevant to them now. In reacting to the NYCI findings, its policy and campaigns manager Grace MacManus identified the essence of the problem: “Young people don’t have a path to an independent life in Ireland.” Consider too, the interview in this newspaper last month of Dubliner Ciarán Harrison, living in Barcelona: “As much as I love Ireland, it doesn’t have a place for me right now.”There is something quietly devastating about those words.