Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about this important Bill. I agree with and welcome much of it. The amalgamation of the science foundation and the Irish Research Council, combining their respective remits, is welcome but I hope there will be more funding for innovation and higher education because our youth today are our future tomorrow and our greatest asset. We must do everything we can to ensure they avail and probe every opportunity to get ahead. Youth change their minds. Even people in here change their mind practically every hour, not to mind every day. Youth being youth, they change their minds and we must give them scope to do that. We must ensure there are jobs and apprenticeship places for them.

I have come across a good few cases where a young fella with so much of the apprentice time given in a trade then needs hours in a college but is told he has to wait nine or ten months until the next year to get a place in the college. That is not right. I ask the Minister of State to ensure that does not continue to happen. It has been happening in my area. In the past year, at least three or four of these people have had to wait nine or ten months to get a place in the college for the trade they are following, because there is no course available to them. It pinched me a lot and I made representations about it but it still happens from time to time and it should not happen.

Jobs and all that are fine but I am not exaggerating when I say an awful lot of young people are leaving our shores, including last week a lovely young fella from Bonane. They were in their last round-up together and went on a bus tour because he is leaving and trying Australia to see if things are any different or better there. I had a select group of people from Clare visit the bar during Christmas. They all had jobs and were 26, 27, 28 or 30, and the eldest was 31 years of age. The problem they had was whatever job they had - teacher, guard or whatever - they could not see a possibility of providing a home for themselves. They had good jobs. The trouble is it is so hard and expensive to provide a home that most of them have decided to emigrate.

More than a third of the cost of a house goes on taxes and levies. The other thing as far as Kerry and the Killarney area is concerned is you cannot get planning permission, even if you were prepared to go to the extreme and extravagant cost of buying or building a house.

That is the most serious thing. We must address those issues. I am not scaremongering but we have lost an awful lot of our youth from Gneevgullia, Rathmore, Scartaglin, Killarney, Fossa, Kenmare, Bonane and all around us. Lads of 25, 26 and 27 years of age cannot see a way to provide a home for themselves like the people who came before them. I ask the Minister of State to be cognisant of that and to do something about it.

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