John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate my colleague, Senator Seery Kearney, on bringing forward this very important topic. It is good to get this discussion going. Young people have borne the brunt of society's anger at certain things so many times over the past 12 months and they have been forgotten about in certain matters.

One thing that has annoyed me is that young people have had to sacrifice so much by essentially being locked in and cooped up for the last 12 months, and then you see the valley of the squinting windows-type stuff on social media where someone with a mobile phone films a couple of young people having fun outdoors, puts it up online saying this is why we will be in level 5 forever and the horror of it all. It is young people enjoying a level of socialisation in the outdoors. It is not a problem whatsoever. I find the kind of shock-horror we see from people online about it distasteful. In reality, the only reason people put it online is they are looking for a few retweets or likes. They are not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. That was one thing in the past year that annoyed me a little bit when it comes to young people.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a really good discussion with young people in my county of Louth. We had more than 100 people on a call about apprenticeships, which shows us why apprenticeships are so important for people who are aged 17, 18 and 19. There are so many different ways of learning. We all have a different way of learning, which is why apprenticeships are so important. It says to people they can get equally as good a career, job and outcome by doing an apprenticeship they want to do and in which they are interested rather than perhaps going to college and learning in a different way compared with someone else. To see that emphasis now being put back on apprenticeships and how crucial they are is really important.

People talk about the resilience young people have shown, and we look at the leaving certificate. I did my leaving certificate in 2009. The biggest problem with the leaving certificate in 2009 was that a school in Drogheda handed out English paper 2 instead of English paper 1 ahead of the rest of the country. The whole thing then had to be cancelled. I got a C2 and did really badly in my English because I basically studied exactly what I thought the pass examination paper was going to throw up, which then snookered me when the follow-up paper was completely different. That was the big disaster for people of my generation. We thought that was a big deal. If you look at it now, it was nothing whatsoever. The resilience young people have shown, therefore, has been incredible.

We recognise how important it is to get university students back learning on campus. My sister, Ruth, is 20 years of age. She is doing a three-year course in UCD and has spent 50% of her college lifetime upstairs in her bedroom doing online Zoom classes. She is moving to Dublin next week and is so excited to be able to get back to college and learning on campus come September.It is very important for people of that generation to have the college experience. These will be the best years of their lives when they will learn so much about themselves, get a good education and have a good time. I am glad students are getting the opportunity to get back on campus.

The moral of this whole story, which everyone has alluded to already, is the sheer resilience young people have shown. That is to be commended. They are the hidden heroes of this pandemic over the last 15 months, the people who have probably had to make the greatest sacrifices. It is grand for me and many other Senators because we do not go out at weekends and no longer have a social life. These are kids who are in the prime of their lives and they have had a year taken from them.

Young people and sport is an issue that has been overlooked. The ages of 17, 18 and 19 are when good players become very good. Young people have missed out on that. They missed 12 months where they would have been physically developing, honing their skills and getting better at their sport. That is the difference between making it and breaking it. We have seen so many opportunities like that denied to young people in their sporting careers. I hope to God some will still have a good sporting career but we cannot underestimate how important the formative years of 17, 18 and 19 are in the career of a sportsperson. It has to be acknowledged that they have missed out on so much and that society needs to give them that break. I hope that once we get through the vaccination process and reopening is ramped up further during the summer, young people will have one hell of a party because they deserve it.