Like using a hard “j” when pronouncing marijuana there are a few flashing red giveaways that you aren’t as down with the kids as you think. Like asking your social media team to make something “go viral”. Or sending someone an Instagram reel they already saw on TikTok five business weeks ago.
But the real klaxon of intergenerational disconnect goes off around issues of the wallet. In particular, just how much older people don’t understand about the financial realities facing this generation.
When Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke suggested a financial incentive for under-25s to stem the flow of emigration of young Irish minds out the country last week, I had a glimmer of hope. But as football will teach you, it’s the hope that kills you.
Burke proposed a tax cut at the whopping sum of €750. That would be enough to “ensure that we retain our talent in our country”.
With the going price to share a house and a toilet with strangers in Dublin ranging between the €900-€1,000 mark per month, you’d have to question how much a €750 tax cut is an incentive. This is roughly the same price as a seven-day package holiday in a three-star hotel in the Canaries in summer.
I’m not exactly “young” nor am I “talent” that left the country, but as a recent buggerer-offer to Australia, I can confidently say that if someone had offered me €750 I would have been very explicit about which body cavity they could have shoved it in.
I’ve increased my take-home pay. I don’t pay PRSI or USC. I pay less tax but I get a lot more bang for my buck out of what I do pay. My medical treatment has been free so far. The same medication I forked out more than €80 for with the Drugs Payment Scheme cap in Ireland costs me €18 in Australia.
I can get a same-day GP appointment. “Too easy,” comes the familiar Aussie saying from the receptionist confirming my information. And that’s what it all feels like after years in Ireland. Suspiciously too easy.
I see hundreds of dollars go into my pension account every pay-day on top of my wage without having to do anything because superannuation is mandatory here. The same government policy that allowed my fireman father and bank teller mother – regular working-class people with no investment properties or assets – to retire at 60 with enough money to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives. That would have been impossible for me in Ireland. Every day I marvel at their quality of life. My father spent the best part of today inventing a gadget with a rubber glove that gently shoots split peas at the ducks that plague his garden. He isn’t responding to emails that hope they find him well. He is truly free.
There is a wage gap, an age gap and a housing market gap in Ireland. Those from Generation X who have never had to queue to view a mouldy rental property don’t understand what the fuss is about. Sure they might feel sorry for younger people and say “Isn’t it desperate?” while reading the paper. But they have not felt it in their bones. The hopelessness, the frustration. Living through a recession was not to be scoffed at. But there’s something about having a job that should pay well but still doesn’t put a (non-leaking) roof over your head that leads to a special brand of despair. The type that grabs your lungs at 4am and squeezes like a bastard as it tells you that you will not be able to enjoy the life other generations took for granted because the game is rigged against you.
Let this current generation of politicians and bosses live on the entry-level wages they deem “okay” to pay to young people, like a crap version of I’m a Celebrity crossed with Survivor. But instead of being dropped off into the wilderness armed with a knife, some string and packet of rations, they should have to figure out how to rent a place on €40,000 a year while trying to save for a home and avoid scurvy from all the instant noodle you’ll have to eat to just about stay above water financially. The elimination challenge could be crafting the perfectly pitched text message to your landlord who hasn’t fixed the boiler in two weeks to let them know living without hot water in winter is not on but in a grovelling way so they won’t boot you from the house.
What if we did more with the money currently coming into government coffers to help young people instead of just tax cuts? Young people don’t need a tax break, they need reasons to feel hopeful about Ireland again.