Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Fine Gael for tabling this Private Members' motion. As a person who talks a lot about young people, and especially about students, I am always eager to talk about them and what we can do to improve things. The motion refers to the contribution that young people make to our society. I want to talk about young carers. In December, I referred to the fact that it is estimated that there are approximately 67,000 young carers in Ireland - an enormous number. This is according to a report published by the National University of Ireland Galway in conjunction with Young Carers Ireland. Some of the responses showed that young carers face issues with emotional health and well-being and lower life satisfaction than their peers. One third of young carers reported having been bullied in school. One of the most tragic findings of the research was that one in four young carers was going to school or bed hungry because there was not enough food at home. No child should go to bed hungry in a wealthy country such as Ireland and nobody should have to take on a caring role before he or she becomes an adult. In Ireland, we do not dedicate enough resources to carers in general, in the form of home help hours or respite provision, and the report highlights how lacking we are in the context of care supports. It is estimated that 13.3% of young people are undertaking caring roles, which is a huge proportion. I hope we remember that and that the Minister will consider what he and his team can do to better provide for the emotional, physical and material needs of young carers. I thought I would raise that issue while we are speaking to the contribution that young people make.

The motion refers to the student experience. As my party's spokesperson on further and higher education, I take the student experience very seriously. I am sure all of us have heard reports of students and young people being at home on their own, completely isolated. They may have not made any friends in first year. In my first year of college, it was difficult enough to make friends in person, so I can only imagine how extraordinarily difficult it is now. Many young people have considerable anxiety about going onto campus in September to be with people they have never really met and with whom they have only really chit-chatted online. That is causing a very significant level of anxiety and I am sure we all know someone who has experienced that.

As we are talking about the welcome role that education plays and, as other Senators have noted, the impact that being able to access education has, it would be remiss of me not to mention who is not progressing to further and higher education, or even those who are not finishing school. There is great concern this year, according to the teachers to whom I have spoken, regarding the students they would normally be able to capture and get through their education post junior certificate and into the leaving certificate, somehow someway. Those students have been lost this year and we need to think about what we are going to do in that regard. We do not want students just to disappear from the system for ever more and to fall between a number of stools. We need to think about students who have been lost in the interim, particularly between junior certificate and leaving certificate and those who will not have completed school, for whatever reasons, and what additional supports will be provided for them for the coming years.

The motion also mentions the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on young people and their ability to work and earn their own money. As I noted on the Order of Business, a number of families and students applying for SUSI this year have, due to accepting the PUP, been deemed to be above the thresholds. No one should be punished for having received the PUP over the past year. I highlighted last year that this would be a problem in the coming year and asked whether we could do something about it, but nothing has been done. I ask the Minister to raise with his Cabinet colleagues and Senator Seery Kearney to raise with her party colleagues the fact that it is not good enough that people will potentially miss out on continuing their education because they were paid the PUP. I do not know whether it will have to be regarded in same way as the threshold of €4,500 for holiday earnings but there should be a workaround. Thus far, the answer is to get people to apply with reference to exceptional circumstances but I am not sure that is the best response.

The final issue I raise relates to youth unemployment. There was previously a youth guarantee and I hope there will be a European-wide response to youth unemployment. There is an extraordinarily high level of youth unemployment in Ireland at the moment. If we are considering a youth guarantee in the context of how we deal with jobs and training, it is important that it be more than a conveyor belt for getting young people into just any job.It needs to be a job that is meaningful and provides for growth and opportunity. I dare say that pushing someone into a job that is not the right one is almost as bad as leaving him or her without anything at all because it has such an impact on his or her sense of well-being, confidence and potential.

This motion is very welcome. We support the amendments, particularly that relating to lowering the voting age to 16. We are very supportive of that. There is mention of ensuring the voice of young people and their needs are respected and heard. I commend the Irish Second–Level Students' Union, ISSU, and my alma mater, the Union of Students in Ireland, for the incredibly hard work they have been doing over the past year to ensure that the voices of young people are heard.