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\n Kelly Earley<\/p>\n
SOME OF THE biggest stories in last week\u2019s news cycle reflected the looming crises we\u2019re facing in Ireland.<\/p>\n
Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) raised the alarm<\/a> about our ageing population, flagging that by 2045, the number of people aged 85 and over will rise by 162%. Pleading for support from the government, NHI noted that nursing homes are presently at 95% capacity.<\/p>\n With nursing homes \u201ceffectively full\u201d according to NHI chief executive Tadhg Daly, repercussions will be felt in the not-so-distant future. According to the Department of Health, there will be a million people over the age of 65 in Ireland by the end of this decade.<\/p>\n The NHI CEO noted that \u201cAgeing is not a crisis; it is one of Ireland\u2019s greatest achievements.\u201d While this is absolutely true, the entire nation\u2019s ability to reap the spoils of those achievements in decades to come has now been brought into question.<\/p>\n Separately, we have run into major issues with staffing Dublin\u2019s Metrolink construction. Late last week, the National Transport Authority revealed that 8,000 people will be required<\/a> to come onboard to build the 19-kilometre rail system.<\/p>\n The National Transport Authority\u2019s CEO, Anne Shaw, flagged that among the 8,000 people needed across the lifespan of the project, the government will need bricklayers, heavy machine operators and tunnellers. To chip away at just some of the accommodations needed to facilitate this, new purpose-built<\/a> housing is coming down the tracks for 2,000 of these prospective workers.\n<\/p>\n An imminent exodus<\/p>\n Coinciding with these recent stories, the National Youth Council of Ireland\u2019s (NYCI) latest research<\/a> revealed that 68% of 18-24 year olds are considering moving abroad, with 71% believing life would be better elsewhere.<\/p>\n Among the main concerns of young people were housing, securing well-paid work, the adverse impact that life here has on mental health and the cost of transport. Great time to raise transport<\/a> fares, huh?<\/p>\n With the results of this survey, NYCI has called on the government to abolish sub-minimum rates<\/a> of pay for under 20s in Ireland, while expanding free public transport to under 25s, with the goal of relieving some of the pressure that\u2019s sending our young population packing.<\/p>\n Irish people abroad are taking up posts across all industries. People are leaving the country for nursing, tech, construction, teaching and every other imaginable profession \u2013 sometimes, regardless of whether they have a background in it or not.<\/p>\n There are people who\u2019ve never set foot on a building site travelling to Australia for Fly-in, Fly-out (FIFO) roles in mines. One of my best friends, whose background is in corporate communications, is currently in Australia shovelling horse shite. And she still has a reasonably better quality of life there than she did on a decent salary, with relatively low rent in Dublin.<\/p>\n Sometimes it\u2019s not even the money or the housing that sends people onto a plane out of Ireland, but the pursuit of some semblance of hope. Few young people are finding it at home right now.<\/p>\n The answer is right in front of us<\/p>\n In decades to come, when these compounding issues leave us reeling, we\u2019ll be reaping what the current government has sown. Years of inaction on housing have driven Irish people into emergency accommodation, onto the streets and packing their lives up to move to other countries.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t just a failure to build housing, but to adequately regulate the long and short-term rental markets, and to take meaningful steps to address the massive issues of vacancy and dereliction. This year, the Central Statistics Office estimated<\/a> that just over 70,000 properties in Ireland lay vacant. In 2022, rental properties<\/a> accounted for one in five (33,653) vacant properties in the census.<\/p>\n Tensions regarding resourcing and housing scarcity have caused severe discord within communities, with migrants and people of colour bearing the brunt of this. There\u2019s no way to reconcile the idea \u201cIreland is full\u201d with the fact that we\u2019re in desperate need of thousands of workers, for crucial sectors like infrastructure and healthcare.<\/p>\n In the case of the Metrolink development, officials working on the project even stated that they\u2019ve been travelling around Europe to recruit potential workers, as we\u2019re unable to meet the demand with our current population. The fact that this is even necessary reflects multiple failures in housing, investment in young people and our management of migration.<\/p>\n Our prioritisation of the private rental market over social and public housing has already come back to bite us in a big way. What\u2019s most unfortunate is that it could be decades before we start to wonder if Ireland shot itself in the foot by making policy changes to accommodate populist, racist rhetoric regarding immigration.\u00a0<\/p>\n