Last weekend I was in three pubs, one nightclub, two cafes, one restaurant and one takeaway. During that period, I arranged to meet a total of 12 people, bumped into a further 11 friends and was introduced to four new people, almost all under the age of 30. Last weekend I did not talk about Irish political corruption, rezoning, Bertie Ahern or the European Commission while other topics untouched from Friday to Monday included the situation in Northern Ireland, the tribunals and the misjudgments of judges.
The only reason this strikes me as particularly interesting is because it was not a peculiar weekend in any way. In fact as my weekends go, it was impressive in its normality. I met a typical number of people of a similar age to myself, frequented a standard amount of gin palaces and, despite coming at the end of a week in which the newspapers were as full of commentary on Irish political life as any other, none of my friends were talking about Irish politics - just like every other weekend. Of course, this is all highly subjective and not statistical proof of anything at all. I've no doubt that the mail room will be swamped with irate letters from twentysomethings around the country who insist that they spend every weekend huddled over jars of absinthe debating the finer points of the latest white paper with their mates. (Nor am I referring to discussion of the situation in the Balkans, as to my mind this is neither politics nor current affairs, but a question of humanity or the lack of it. Talking and thinking about it is something that transcends all generational divides.
However, I reckon the odds are pretty high that my weekend was typical of most Irish twentysomethings, who are just not talking about politics and not embarrassed to admit it. Much ink has been spilt and many cliches done to death about the political malaise of the younger generation, but actually the very phrase is a telling misnomer. Malaise is the last thing this generation is showing.
People of 22 are doing things their parents wouldn't have dreamed of. People of 21 are starting multi-media companies with their mates and taking on staff within a year. People of 24 are starting theatre companies, with or without a grant from the Arts Council or a space to work in. People of 23 are making enough money to pay £120 a week on rent and still have plenty left to eat out three times a week, go clubbing, shop in Brown Thomas and go to Bali at Christmas.
It all sounds hugely successful and terribly lucky - weren't we the clever ones to be twentysomething in the 1990s rather than the early 1980s, when we'd all have been packed off by mammy to take full advantage of Uncle Morrison in the US? And aren't we the bold, stroppy youngsters to be so ignorant of and bored by the very system that provided us with such riches? And there, you see, is the sticking point. If we weren't so busy, I've a feeling that all of us twentysomethings might just feel a little bit resentful rather than grateful. You should have heard the careers advice we were given at school. I distinctly remember one series of interviews when everybody in my class was assured that their aptitudes indicated they would be a good prison officer - a pragmatic solution to staffing problems in the prison system, no doubt, but hardly inspiring if you went in to find out about how to get ahead in advertising.
So it wasn't really surprising that many people presumed that we wouldn't be getting a job here at all. Most of us had sisters or brothers that were doing something terribly glamorous in Amagansett or Islington, so it wasn't entirely a question of being dragged, kicking and screaming for Tayto, out of the country, but neither was it something that we really felt we had much choice about. If you wanted to do something in particular - make films, make pots of money, make nifty little footstools out of washing machine parts - you went elsewhere to do it. Then you came back when you'd made lots of money and everybody thought you were great.
Now we find ourselves one of the first generations for many years that is willing and able to stay in Ireland, and yet we show a massive disinterest in the system that bought us our residence permits. Yet far from showing political malaise, it seems to me that Generation 20 has made the most political gesture of all - its has turned its back on politics at home. Because if twentysomethings are ignoring what goes on in Irish life, it's only because we don't really feel that the tawdry cut and thrust of politics really is what's going on in Irish life.
Most of us don't have pensions, we don't have staff jobs, we don't have paid leave - all the luxuries that the people who are giving us contracts and freelance work fought so hard to win. So we're really rather busy keeping up with what's going on - on TV, on the Net, on the catwalks, on the scene, on the street, on the stock exchange - and don't have much time for what seems like remarkably old news.
So perhaps the next step for Ireland, in the Boom Boom Rooms of Europe, is for some of the pension-holding, secure job-toting, policy-forming, fiftysomethings to get off the stage and give us a bit of room.
It's a young population yet all the positions of influence are held by people that may or may not have been young once, but certainly aren't young now. I'm afraid nature is on our side - like it or not, we're the future and if you don't mind, we'd like to start working on it sooner rather than later.