Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)

I will discuss an epidemic in this country that one in five of us experiences, which is loneliness. A report recently came out from the European Commission that said that Ireland was the loneliest country in Europe. The effects of that on young men and older men are significant and have far-reaching consequences. The former US surgeon general said that loneliness was the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That is how damaging it is to our mental health and our social health. There is a strong correlation between the loneliness that young men often experience, the antisocial behaviour that sometimes occurs on our streets, and the massive social costs that we see across our country. In this moment, as we are coming to the close of 2025, we went through the Covid pandemic, which I think exacerbated the major risks of loneliness for many people. The social media environment is not helping for young men.

The housing crisis and inequality in our society have exacerbated the loneliness that many people are feeling, to the point that 40% of 16-to-24-year-olds in this country experience some strong level of loneliness. Marry that with the highest difficulty in the EU of accessing mental health services. I know the Minister of State cares very much about that and she is working hard on it, but we need to do much better. In the context of that, the last Government had an action plan on loneliness and did not deliver it. It had committed to that in its programme for Government. This Government does not have the same commitment. We need to do so much better. If we do not, we will see an exacerbation not just of loneliness but of all those social costs. Young men will turn to blaming women, immigrants and people from the LGBT community and we will all be suffering from that. History is littered with memories of young men doing harmful things to themselves and others because of these kinds of deleterious effects. I encourage the Government to focus on it.

See this speech in context