Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Councillor Leah Whelan is a Socialist Party councillor in Tallaght in the constituency of Dublin South-West. She is 25 years-old. Leah is in a WhatsApp group with 21 of her friends. Some 16 of those friends have emigrated. All of them have left this year. Three of them left earlier today. What does the Government offer this generation? There is a €500 tax credit for renters, which would not even pay ten days of rent over a year in Cork city and which may well end up in the pockets of landlords because of the Government's refusal to freeze rents. It has offered an increase in the minimum wage, which will be totally swallowed up by inflation and which is, in effect and reality, a cut. There is €1,000 off college fees, which still cost €2,000 but the €1,000 off is for one year only. This is cold comfort for those thousands of young people who deferred their college courses this year because they could not afford the student accommodation. In other words it is too little and too late, certainly for Leah's friends.

The Irish State is 100 years old this year. During those 100 years, we have had no system other than capitalism and no Government led by any party other than Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. De Valera said: "No longer shall our children, like our cattle, be brought up for export." His words were utterly hollow. Many more than 1 million people have been forced to emigrate since the foundation of the State. In fact, more than 1 million have emigrated since those words were uttered in the mid-1930s. Mass emigration has robbed this country of many of its youngest, most creative and most vital elements. Many a tear has been shed and many a heart has been broken, but for the political establishment of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, there have always been strategists who saw this mass youth emigration as a positive, or at least as having a positive side to it. The mass emigration of young people took pressure off conservative Governments, removed criticism from young and angry voices, lessened the opportunity for large street protests and held back the development of the left. It is happening again today. More than 100,000 emigrated between April 2020 and April 2022, half of them Irish nationals and many of the others were people who would have liked to have stayed here.

The question today is if the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael strategists have looked at the fact that there is a general election in two and a half years’ time. Have they seen the level of youth alienation with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the radicalism of young people on marriage equality, in the repeal the eighth campaign and the Black Lives Matter movement and now consciously decided to either open the floodgates to emigration or to at least, not stand in the way of an exodus in any serious way? In a crime investigation, detectives will ask if the suspect has a record, form, a motive and what their actions signify. On every one of those counts, the Government parties have questions to answer.

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