Party poopers forget what it’s like to be young

YOU can take our nightclubs. You can take our pubs. You can even take our house parties. But you will never take our freedom. More to the point, you will never take our ability to get langers of a Saturday night and take to the streets for a bit of an oul’ sing- song

Them lads in Killarney, those latenight revellers, telephone box clamberers, short-skirted movers and leather-trousered shakers, are now the most hated people in Ireland, the most hated people since a few Dubs organised a session in their local and things got slightly out of hand.

But are they really? Do we hate them? Have they brought shame upon themselves and their family? Are their actions so reprehensible, so ‘disgraceful’, that they have devalued the efforts of frontline workers, demeaned the lives of those who’ve died, and derailed the national effort to quell this deadly virus?

No. They are just a few youngsters letting off some steam. They are not putting two fingers up at anyone, not snubbing their nose at the authorities; they’re just fed up, like us all.

Before we pass judgement, before we castigate their actions, we should perhaps take a moment to reflect. Those in the video, the 30 or so people visible in the 24 seconds of ‘carnage’, all look to be of an age, to be in their late teens, early twenties, with maybe one or two exceptions.

Granted, we weren’t all agile enough to scale a phone box at that age, but most of us liked a night out. And most of us, especially those lucky enough to grow up either side of our many recessions, could afford a decent one every weekend, probably a couple of them.

We could afford to indulge ourselves, to drink to excess, safe in the knowledge we had a semblance of a life to return to once the working week resumed.

Now, from the comfort of our 30s, 40s and so on, we can look back on those days with rose-tinters, imagine them as simpler times, more innocent times with more innocent people.

Our 18-24s have been hit hard by the pandemic, not as hard as our elderly, not as hard as our frontline workers, as parents, Leaving Cert students or the thousands who’ve spent the last six months isolated and alone, terrified the virus will creep into their lives and snuff them out.

Nonetheless they’ve been hit hard. Unemployment is rife, the future as bleak as it’s ever been. The option of emigration, so often the only way out of a deadening, morale-sapping existence, is not available, and might not be for the foreseeable.

Those due to attend college in the coming weeks will also miss out, deprived of ordinary campus life, the coming-of-age experience which shapes so many lives.

These concerns may seem trifling when compared to those of your elderly neighbour who’s terrified to go outside the door, but the people in that video are at a point in their lives when everything should seem possible, when the world should be opening out before them.

Instead they’re cooped up indoors, frustrated, bored, broke. They’re watching their lives drift by, wondering when their turn will come.

They’re already getting blamed for the spread of the virus anyway, so why not let loose, why not take to the streets and prove everyone right.

Most pertinently however, this is not their virus. We’ve all seen the figures, seen that the most common demographic contracting the virus are now those under the age of 45.

And we’ve also seen the levelling off in the number of deaths. Put simply, young people are not afraid of Covid-19, it is fast becoming an irrelevance for them.

Yes, they are undoubtedly concerned about their parents, their grandparents, contracting the illness. But those at highrisk are already cocooning, self-isolating, and furthermore, I refuse to believe anyone in that video will spend the next fortnight flagrantly disobeying the rules, mixing with people they know are vulnerable.

Instead they will go back to their small, concealed worlds, lives which should be full of excitement, plans for the future; trips, highlights, love, discovery; but are instead spent in a state of permanent uncertainty, spent wondering when it will be their turn, if their turn will ever come.