Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Well, on the, whether it was the young or the old or everybody, I mean everybody suffered. That's the first thing. This was an absolute catastrophe. And there have been about 80 financial crises across the world since 1975. And, there's no popular way or pleasant way of dealing with them. And as always, there's always pain and suffering, and universally in Ireland, people suffered. Did the young suffer more? Well, young male workers in the building industry where there was 250,000 employed, that went down to under 100,000 and it's going back up now rapidly again, but yes, there was a whole tranche of young male workers lost their jobs. And then they, and many of their contemporaries, were forced to emigrate because in the early stages of the crisis jobs were, were, jobs were being lost rather jobs being created. The job creation didn't really recommence until 2012. So on the basis of unemployment and emigration, I'd agree with the statement.

On people on earned income and people on welfare, there was a commitment given by the Government coming into office for our period of the recovery, but of course the crisis was going on for some time before we came in in 2011. But if you take it, during the years where the programme under the troika was operational, basic rates of social welfare weren't cut, but other rates were cut and, again, for the young, there were adjustments downward on social welfare payments for persons in their 20s, and you could add that on to the previous remarks. For people on earned income, there was mandatory pay reductions. You, you'd know yourself the level but they ranged, depending on Civil Service grade or public service grade from 15% to 20% and there's only just a commencement of restoration of that now. And as well as that, the universal social charge was brought in by the previous Government and you know people paid a lot more taxes on personal income, and then their personal income went down as well.

Now in the private sector it's not as clear because the data wouldn't be as easily, wouldn't be as easily put together as in the public sector but there would be a strong view that many private sector companies cut wages, and they certainly abolished overtime or reduced overtime. So again, private sector workers - earned income workers - would have had a very heavy penalty. There was a bit of a crossover then. You'll recall that young teachers, for example, were put on a lower starting salary than teachers who had been in the job, and much lower than their predecessors. So I suppose that reinforces the opinion that in certain professions young people were targeted more than middle-aged people with families.