Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Cathasaigh again for bringing forward this useful legislation. I have very little to add to the questions I put last week. One of the questions I put was about the categories of citizens that might be deemed suitable for inclusion, so I endorse what Ms Ní Bhuachalla says about all categories of citizens as set out in the Equal Status Act.

As regards thinking about the future, we have generation Z, generation X and so on. I am 58. I refer to my age group, my demographic cohort, as generation F, a generation that has failed the generation coming after them. My parents were born in the thirties and had their working lives in the fifties and sixties. My grandmother fought in the War of Independence. She wanted a better life for the young men and women who would come after her. Then my parents' generation put in place all the building blocks for social goods, notwithstanding all the issues Ireland had - things like free access to secondary education. Social housing was considered normal. I have often said this here, but I remember 1972, when I was six years old, before Ireland even joined the European Economic Community, EEC, as it was then. Ireland in 1972 was the Ireland of the pitchfork and the candlestick. Ours was one of the poorest countries in Europe yet we were building social housing. I remember standing on the street with my sister in Finglas in 1972, a six-year-old and a four-year-old, and we saw all the prefabricated houses going past the end of our road that were being used to build Finglas south and Finglas west. Even when we had nothing, we were building houses. Since my generation has taken the reins - I would date this back to about 1990 or 1991 - it has pursued a neoliberal agenda that has commodified everything, including health and housing - homes. We are where we. As regards young people, including my adult and teenage children and all the students I lectured over the last 22 years, I used to ask groups of postgraduate students to put their hands up if they thought they could plan to have their own home or apartment in Dublin - I stopped asking the question because I felt it was unethical - and no hand would go up. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, shelter is a basic human requirement for us to be functional. Therefore our society is, by definition, profoundly dysfunctional.

That cheery preamble is why I welcome this Bill. I am here moaning about generation F. I do not know how much younger than me Marc is, but he is not generation F. He is generation FI - fix it. It could have stood for something else.

As I said last week, rather than me just giving out about things, it is very brave to try to engineer a solution. This is one of the ways we can do that. We must do it.

What are the biggest challenges for global youth work? Is funding a challenge? Is it a recognition that what you do is an essential social good? What are the biggest challenges and how does this proposed structure assist in seeking to meet them?