Millennial generation will not sweep SF to power any time soon

There was no baby boom in Ireland in the 1990s so young voters have less influence than they think, writes Jody Corcoran

NEW Zealand prime minister-elect Jacinda Ardern (37) is the latest to join the club of young world leaders which that most vociferous of demographic groups, Millennials, like to believe foretells a changing of the guard that will usher in sweeping social and political change, not least in Ireland.

From Canada to France and Austria to, well, Ireland it is said that these recently elected leaders mostly in their 30s represents a coming of age for Millennials, who themselves are the progeny of baby boomers during what was an international birth rate surge in the 1980s and ’90s.

The Millennial generation is generally marked by an increased use and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies.

Their tech-savvy smarts are said to be also behind the buzz around those monumental bores Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, effectively old-school Marxists dressed up as democratic socialists, said to represent the (admittedly, as was said before here) leftward shift of the political centre since the crash, neither of whom, it must be added, were actually elected to the high offices they sought in recent times.

Still, they continue to be presented as a victor of sorts, which is a bit like Millennials getting a medal anyway, to remind them they came last, or at least did not actually win the school three-legged race.

The point I am coming to is that the influence of Millennials in Ireland is greatly overstated, which is something Repeal the Eighth campaigners, for example, should remember ahead of a referendum, not to mention political parties ahead of an election.

Why so? Well, for starters, there was no baby boom in Ireland in the 1990s. The opposite, in fact…

Millennials prefer to use the tool of cloying emotion on social media rather than refer to a fact. So, for the rest of you, here is a fact: the population of young adults aged between 19 and 24 stood at 331,208 in 2016, a fall of 6.5pc since 2011.

In other words, there are far fewer Millennials around than they themselves would have you believe, and consequently far less influence where it matters, which is not on social media, but at the ballot box. I should add at this point, I have two Millennials at home myself and I love them dearly.

While I am in this curmudgeonly mood, though, let me turn to that other old canard that young voters are set to sweep Sinn Fein to power on the back of what is routinely referred to as the housing crisis, which is the underlying complaint of Millennials unable to get on the housing ladder.

Before I do, let me defer to my good friend, Conor Skehan, the soon to depart head of the Housing Agency who said again last week, as he has repeatedly stated in this pages, that the housing crisis here is no worse, indeed is far better than elsewhere around the world — and also that it is coming to an end.

So, relax Millennials, after the standard post-crash lull, housing supply is on the way back and should be coming on stream towards the end of next year, which will reduce asking prices and allow you to scramble on to the property ladder like the rest of us for the remainder of your lives, if that is what you so desire.

Let’s just hope you saved your deposit, rather than splashing it on Frappuccinos while living it large at home with mammy and daddy having your laundry done, or blowing it on rents in areas where you clearly can not easily afford to live.

That would be your parents, by the way, who routinely saved for mortgage deposits while living with your grandparents and paid down mortgages on extortionate double-digit interest rates back in the day; and that would be your grandparents without whose support the same-sex marriage referendum would have been lost.

In any event, the concern seems to be that young voters — let us stick with those aged 18-24 — will vote in large numbers for Sinn Fein, little or no recollection that they have of what is referred to as the Troubles, that is, the murder of 3,500 people over 30 years, give or take.

Well, here again we must refer to a few facts. We are now mid-election cycle in Ireland. At this stage before the last election, Sinn Fein was at 24pc in the opinion polls. In the subsequent election, however, it won 295,000 votes or thereabouts, that is, 14pc to 15pc of the total vote. In other words, around 10pc short of where it was peak polling. By any standard, that is some fall.

At the moment, let us say mid-election cycle again, Sinn Fein is polling at around 19pc, well short of its previous peak, but still higher than its actual performance in 2011. Why it is then that Sinn Fein seems to repeatedly under perform, and will again at the next election?

The answer is contained beyond the opinion poll fragment of a snapshot which tells us that around 30pc of 18 to 24-year-olds intend to vote for Sinn Fein. I should add that 18 to 24-year-olds represent around 7pc of the total vote (a potential 21,000 votes for Sinn Fein in the last election), while over-60s, for example, represent 20pc of the total vote.

Break it down, and we find that most 18 to 24-yearolds are significantly urban based, the vast majority are male and in the C1, C2, D and E social classes. In other words, many are dependent on welfare, or are either unskilled or semiskilled, have left school early and many lack basic work training or qualifications.

You will be familiar with the pained media releases of all the political parties when the CSO live register figures are released: most recently in relation to the 32,000 under the age of 25 that are signing on; specifically, the more than 11,000 young long-term unemployed. In the main, these are the kids who tell opinion pollsters that they are minded to vote Sinn Fein.

To be frank, these are not young men quaffing smashed avocado, desperate to live in out-of-reach apartments overlooking Grand Canal Dock.

In many cases, they are inter-generational poor and — here’s the thing — by and large, they do not actually vote. That is a fact. Nor, to be equally honest, do they much care for the petite concerns of Millennials who came to age during the footstamping, gimme, gimme, gimme era of the Celtic Tiger, to whom the word “No” is almost an affront from which they must retreat to a safe space.

So, Sinn Fein may continue to piecemeal build 20 years — yes, 20 years — after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, to the point that 295,000 voters out of a total electorate of 2,133,000 decided to vote for them after almost a decade of austerity.

But that is not to say that Sinn Fein is going to sweep to power any time soon, not at the rate it is progressing, and certainly not when unemployment has significantly fallen, at a time when there are plenty of jobs available for those young men to whom I refer, and also, for that matter, for your average, standard issue Millennials who seem to think they are grossly underpaid and undervalued but in fact are not — relative to their experience and expertise.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy dad — yes, I know, too late — I say this as somebody who spent the first three years of working life being paid the princely sum of £31 a week, or adjusted for inflation, €4,800 a year in today’s money, on what was then referred to as an AnCO training course. So get over yourselves. Thank you.

‘Let’s just hope you have saved your deposit, rather than splashing it on Frappuccinos while living it large at home with mammy’