Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Earlier this year, the National Youth Council of Ireland called for a national task force to assist young people to get back into jobs and education as soon as the economy was allowed to reopen and I fully support this call. There has been a lot of talk about young people. There are great young people in west Cork. Obviously, young people go a little astray at times but there are great young people there. I have seen it down through the years with the Garda youth awards, an initiative that was started up by gardaí in west Cork. Young people have won awards for the great things they have done in working with the underprivileged, working with the elderly and helping in so many good ways. There are truly great young people out there.

The best way to bring the best out of a young person is to look at the local garda, the community garda, and the way such people work in the local community. Some community gardaí in west Cork are second to none at bringing the best out of young people, and they have been down through the years.

The State has a lot to answer for, however. If a young person is living in rural Ireland, they need a car to get from A to B. As we have no public transport, there is fierce frustration among young people. Members of the younger generation need to be able to drive. All of us have seen at first hand the disaster it is to try to get a theory test and then to try to get a driving test. Our younger generation want to get up in the morning and go to work or to college but when they live in rural Ireland, where there is no transport, they are relying completely on other people to get them to where they want to go. That leads to savage frustration among young people, which has to be looked at in a fair way. We need theory tests and driving tests to be expedited to let these young people, who have suffered enough through Covid-19, get on the road. We need to let them get on with their lives, not that many of our students will be able to afford to buy a car, unfortunately, with the price of insurance, car tax and now, of course, the carbon tax that the Government is belting down on young people's backs and which is going to hurt young people the most.

The Union of Students in Ireland has said that students have been asking for the same three things for years. The first is affordable accommodation. We were outside the Dáil recently with students who showed Deputies, myself included, that some students have to live in tents to get access to education. We have to also get rid of the €3,000 college registration fee. Despite the three calls from the Union of Students in Ireland, who are the next generation of leaders, action from the Government is not occurring and, in fact, the plight of young students has got worse, with higher accommodation costs and lack of student accommodation impacting on all students this year. The entire situation is leading to an awful lot of frustration. Do not get me started on how badly student nurses were treated during the recent pandemic. It was not good enough by a long shot.

Earlier this year, the Government published Pathways to Work 2021-2025, which has actions across the Government to tackle youth unemployment, to increase access to training and, in particular, to progress apprenticeships, which need to be looked at.

We need to help young people a lot more than we have been to date.

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