Young people have every reason to feel aggrieved on Budget Day

With the budget this week splashing the cash, why are so many people cross when so many things are going well? Are they all justified? And if not, whose grievances need serious attention and why?

Budget Day these times is an early Christmas. It comes with presents and goodies for everyone. The Government has been making a list and – with all the leaks these days – they have been announcing it twice. Tax reductions, spending increases and ‘one-off’ supports. With a massive budget surplus, everyone is a winner. Spoonfuls of sugar for all, and surely no medicine to go down?

And yet there will be many disappointed regardless of what is in their budget stocking. We will hear a lot from them this week, and it’s worth breaking down the critical voices into different groups. We need to be more discerning about the politics of grievance in the Ireland of today, for not all complainers are as equal as others.

Some should really dial down the usual complaining. Lots and lots of people in Ireland are doing just fine. For them, moaning is a hobby rather than a necessity. When people’s incomes increase above the rate of inflation, belly aching should arise only because their tummies are full. After the budget, many of them should just say thanks very much and get back to what they must consider the hard work of living a comfortable and even well-heeled life. A life that this budget will make even more comfortable.

But that isn’t everyone, and certainly one group that no budget can satisfy is those without a stable home. There are so many impacted by our housing malaise: those renting watching their rents go up and up; those who cannot get a social house; those with no roof over their head at all: the list goes on.

And a particularly large and disillusioned cohort are those young people who cannot afford to buy a home, and certainly not one that their hard work and endeavour should entitle them to. They have worked hard, gone to college or done some sort of training, earned their qualifications, and now they cannot get the rewards their enterprise and industry deserve.

There is something especially destabilising for a society – especially ones like ours – when young people like this cannot buy a home, when every instinct is urging them to do so. It has a radicalising effect, because if young people don’t feel they have a stake in society, they will embrace ideas and causes which comfortable people will find uncomfortable. There is of course no clear link between young people singing ‘Oh ah, up the ‘Ra’ and the housing crisis, but do we really think they are in no sense connected?

People want to buy a house and settle down. And when they can’t, not all the nice budget measures ever designed will dispel that anger. It affects different places a little differently, but it is nationwide.

Because Dublin has a higher proportion of its population made up of the 25-39 cohort, you feel it really acutely up here. In Dublin, with better salaries, the difficulty is often about where to buy. Many young people – a lot of them from the West – are confronted by the dilemma of whether to buy something small within the M50, or something a bit bigger the far side of it.

And that is a huge decision. For commuting from out beyond the M50 every day is one thing. The creches out there open at 7am and close at 7pm (you get the picture). But that choice means a lot more for someone from the West. Many from the West who have chosen to live in Dublin rather than at home have already found that a hard decision to take and to live with. But they usually make it because of the advantages and attractions of living in the actual city of Dublin. But if your home is a long way out past the M50, saying you live in Dublin is more a figure of speech than a reality. Many in that category will wonder why they didn’t move home. Many, as we all know, have.

But while young people can contemplate that move back, it doesn’t always make things much easier. For the problem is everywhere. When at home, I look at the estate agent’s window and ask myself what the mechanic going out with the hairdresser does any more? Once upon a time they could hope to buy a three bed semi-d in a decent estate. We built loads of them in the 1990s. Where are those new estates in the West of Ireland today? There aren’t enough of them.

And yes, the country is building. We are building a lot of housing ‘units’. Many of those are apartments, and there is no denying we need more of those. But the young people we all sent to Dublin or Galway to make their lives there want more than an apartment. And would you blame them? And to compound their anger, lots of those apartments are ‘build to rents’. There are the large apartment complexes which are built by institutional investors and where not one of them will be sold to a private buyer.

If you want to see a young person fill with fury, explain to them how these ‘build to rents’ need to be part of our overall housing mix. Give them chapter and verse on how they are a fast and effective way to increase overall housing supply. Be sure to help them understand that the more of these we build the more this will free up other properties for them to buy.

Those points may or may not be true. But if you are trying to convince young people who want to settle down and hopefully start a family of that, you might as well not bother.

All this is creating a terrible situation for young and energetic people. Their rent is huge. If they have been in their place for a while, it will have a rent cap. But at any time they might be evicted for no fault of their own. And then their rent in their new place will be astronomical. They make good money but it is devoured by those rent payments. Too many of the older comfortable crowd think they should spend less on frivolities and that would somehow make it alright. Property price increases over the last 30 years cannot be addressed by young people drinking instant coffee and never eating out.

Young people in Ireland pay vast sums to old people for a home. The transfer of wealth from one group to the other is probably the greatest in Ireland since the Cromwellian plantation. But unlike in the 17th century, this time that transfer of wealth is not sectarian in motivation, it is intergenerational.

And so if you wonder why so many young people will not be smiling at the measures in this budget, this is why. If you wonder why they are so disaffected and so angry amidst all the obvious wealth in this society, this is why. And if you wonder why so many of the comfortable and well-heeled in Ireland should quit their moaning, this is also why.