Politics

What is Fine Gael doing for under-35s?

Party claims without jobs it helped create, there would be ‘no opportunity’ in Ireland for people coming out of college

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill cites cuts in registration fees for third-level students, more generous Susi grants, first-time buyers' grants and cuts in public transport fares among the initiatives aimed at under-35s.

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Harry McGee
Fri Sep 15 2023 - 18:40

For most political parties in Ireland, their pitch to voters under 35 begins and ends with housing. For Fine Gael, it’s a bit different. It’s about jobs. Minister of State at the Department of Finance Jennifer Carroll-MacNeill says it’s not to diminish the importance of housing as an issue. She argues, however, that without what her party has delivered in the past decade, nothing would be possible for young people.

“I remember 10 years ago, people were coming out of college and there was just no opportunity here. The scale of unemployment, youth unemployment in particular, was just absolutely massive for those people whose parents had lost jobs, and they were teenagers.

“Coming out of college now, people in their 20s and 30s, they are in the strongest employment situation we’ve ever had. You know, we have youth unemployment of 7 per cent. The OECD average is 10 per cent and we are the third lowest in the EU, behind Germany and Slovenia.

“It’s an absolutely extraordinary turnaround and sometimes I feel that there’s a risk of taking that reversal of fortune for granted.

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“Now you can get a job in Ireland if you want one. You can get a high value job and the resilience we have in our employment sector is also high. So we have tech, we have finance. When there was a small tech retrenchment last year, a lot of it was picked up by finance and by Fintech, Medtech and pharma.

“We’re building out an extraordinary film sector. We are diversifying the economy in ways that don’t leave single points of failure.”

In education, Carroll-MacNeill cities falls in registration fees for third-level students, more generous Susi grants, and, on a narrower focus, new rules on tips which help students working their way through college in the hospitality sector.

Among the other big ticket items directed at under 35s is the first-time buyers’ allowance, worth up to €30,000 for homes costing €500,000 or less, as well as a halving of public transport costs for people who are 23 or younger.

What are the parties doing for the under-35s?

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