Lorraine Courtney
Politicians don’t care about young people so it’s time to form Snowflake Party
We have a Taoiseach trying to buy us with gimmicks, whether it is novelty socks or llama selfies
THE general feeling seems to be: “Really? An election?” And it hasn’t even been announced. But it’s important we all take the election seriously, as Brexit borders, the trolley crisis, housing crisis and lingering austerity cuts hang in the balance.
Most of my peers are electorally homeless and stumped. We have abandoned our parents’ generation’s Civil War politics, but while many of us know exactly which party we wouldn’t vote for, we’re not always sure exactly which party we would vote for either.
Young people need help, help that seems unlikely to come from the next government, no matter if Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil wins most seats. There’s the motley parties of the left, but their outrageous pledges to give free money to everyone are never properly costed in the parties’ manifestos and would have awful effects on the economy. And young people are economically prudent because we’re living in the wreckage of wild spending.
For years, millennials have been ignored in Leinster House, where the average age of current TDs is 50, so our problems continue to get worse. Hardly anyone brings up the practical, everyday issues we are struggling with. Like, where are we going to live? Will we be able to afford babies? Maybe it’s because we are young or maybe it’s because the grown-ups keep calling us “snowflakes”, a millennial subset much smaller than portrayed.
Instead we have a Taoiseach trying to buy us with gimmicks, whether it is novelty socks or llama selfies.
We’ve spent years being pushed through the exam sausage factory only to graduate with far less opportunity than we were promised. The last few governments have proven themselves unable to provide us with affordable housing, secure employment, living wages, proper tenant rights, and properly paid internships.
They have stripped us of our benefits (why is nobody talking about bringing back tax relief on rent?) and demand excessive USC payments on top of already hefty tax and PRSI deductions.
All the while they are enriching an ageing population that one day we will be responsible for caring and paying for.
The sad stats have been trotted out a million times but here they are again. Census 2016 figures show that the 20- to 34-year-old age group was among just two which recorded a decline – loads of us are now in Oz. The shortage of affordable housing and the pervasiveness of low-paid and precarious employment mean we’re boomeranging kidults. Some 458,874 people over 18 were still living with their parents in 2016. Fewer than half (215,088) were at work, while 66,516 were unemployed and 152,269 were students.
Our wages have suffered more than those of any other age group and far too many of us are getting up early, Leo, for €9.25 an hour.
We’ll have to wait longer than any previous generation to get a State pension – if the pension pot isn’t entirely empty when we come to retire. And as the millennial crisis continues to be sidelined, everyone will have to face up to the challenges it will bring. Birth rates will go down, and divorce rates will increase. Unemployment will mean taxpayers are overburdened.
Despite our supposedly selfcentred, echo-chamber habits, this isn’t really about me. Or you. It’s about the next Dáil that will determine this country’s place on anything from immigration, trade, workers’ rights, the Eighth Amendment, stopping cuts to domestic violence services and, with the speed of this election, this isn’t the time for business as usual. It’s the time to embrace new strategies to get the TDs we need.
The latest Red C poll by the ‘Sunday Business Post’ shows Fine Gael on 27pc and Fianna Fáil on 26pc, so the results might seem inevitable. That’s how they want us to feel. Because if a certain course feels inevitable, then why bother trying to fight it? Remember Donald Trump beat all odds to become president, and we have seen politics beat polls.
There isn’t a single political party that has said or done anything to convince me they want to solve young people’s problems, let alone that they are the ones to stop them.
When I vote it feels like nothing will change. But it’s time for a change. It is time for young people to set up our own Snowflake Party. I’m not even joking. If not an entirely new party, I want to see young people showing up to vote, and young candidates dominating elections across the country.
In order for us to change things, we need to get involved. It’s clear that nobody else is going to build a better country for us. We need to run for election, we need to vote and do it ourselves.