Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was not paying much attention yesterday to what the Taoiseach said about accessing mortgages until I went home and opened my Facebook page where I saw the timeline of people from my community talking about how unachievable that is for them. Not only is one of the three options that the Taoiseach offered, moving home to live with parents, travelling abroad to raise the money or getting money from parents, off the cards for many Irish people but all are off the cards for them.

I wrote down some of the comments I could repeat but left out many of them. Some of them relate to personal situations, the number of children they have and how it is not feasible for them to move home or the fact that their parents are barely able to meet their own bills let alone hand out money. However, the ones that stood out were from parents who stated how badly they feel as parents that they will not be able to help their children in the way the Taoiseach suggests most of us should do.

One person commented that this man is the leader of our country but does nothing but "make me feel bad about myself". It is not good enough for any leader in any situation in any country to make a large part of the population feel they are failing as parents, or as young people who cannot access a mortgage. This can be taken as a criticism but also as a request to the Taoiseach to get a little more to grips with the realities of many of the lives he represents. A leader should pick us up not make us feel bad about ourselves and our failings, in not being able to access money for our children. If I was to read out all the comments on the page they would give a wider picture of the situations people are living in and the fact that some parents are barely able to hold onto their own homes let alone give their children one.