Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am aware of that statistic. It was the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, who raised it with me. I do not think it is tens of thousands. I stand to be corrected on that. I will have to look it up. The reality is 21,000 young people went to Australia last year, which is a massive increase from the previous year. Obviously there is something amiss here. We are not in the age group where our friends who had left are coming back or hoping to come back and are trying to raise a family. Fundamentally, the housing crisis is having a severe impact on that. In recent years, I have been to countless weddings and a large number of those who got married some years ago are still living with their parents as a married couple because they have nowhere to go. They cannot get a mortgage if they have been abroad. They find it impossible to get a full-time permanent job. As a result, they cannot get a mortgage. They cannot get planning and they find the rents are very high. The Minister and I can argue the point about the numbers. I do not have the figures in front of me. However, we do have the figure of 21,000 and we know that is a doubling. We need to look at why so many young people are leaving and we need to try to deal with that.

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