RITE AND REASON: Almost five years ago, Cardinal Desmond Connell described himself as "an unrepentant socialist" where the housing crisis, particularly for young couples, was concerned. The young Irish are now thinking on similar lines, as Toner Quinn illustrates
A few weeks before the new millennium, my girlfriend and myself moved back to Ireland from Scotland. In our mid-20s and expecting our first child, we were tempted home by the thought of having family support and friends around us. And at the back of our mind was all this talk of something called the Celtic Tiger, which we thought, at the very least, wouldn't do our chances any harm.
For 12 months we lived in a room in my mother's house, then - in a strike for independence - for two months in a miserable one-bedroom flat (at £580 a month), followed by six months minding my sister's house while she was abroad. Since then we've been renting a two-bedroom house belonging to a relative, thus making it affordable.
We have stopped looking to buy a house. We try to block out the subject. If it does surface in conversation, we inevitably circle around emigration as a solution.
On a scale of the fortunes of today's young Irish, we are the lucky ones, simply because our family was in the position to bale us out. But that doesn't mean I don't feel enraged at the circumstances in which many young Irish now find themselves.
Leafing through property pages and seeing houses for €300,000 or more, and realising that our society implicitly expects us to try and purchase that house, leaves me speechless.
Even an iota of business acumen would tell you it is not a smart move to even attempt to buy such a property when your salary is €20,000 to €30,000 a year.
But the older generation frowns and tell us it was the same when they were our age, that they too had to stretch themselves. Did they have to pay 10 times or more their salary?
The banks tell us we should be aiming towards 3.5 times our salary! We seem to be speaking different languages, and living in entirely different worlds.
Estate agents, backed up by politicians, regularly stating that it is "a good time for first-time buyers" leave young people blank. The Government makes noises about social housing, but shows no real sense of urgency, certainly not equal to the panic that is out there.
Their slavish following of the economics of the free market has shown up their lack of imagination. Parents with children still living at home because of house prices showed incredible patience by voting this Government back in.
The young Irish are demonstrating fury at the abolishment of the €3,800 first-time buyers' grant, but not purely because of the monetary loss. Their anger has been building for years, and it is not only to do with housing. They have become weary of the conflicting messages that our society has been sending them.
They are told they are educated and confident, and have the right to strive for much more in life, and yet they shouldn't expect a home.
They are told they are a generation who are imbued with a new confidence in their Irishness and in their country, but they are still expected to be servile to the absolutes of the free market and to understand that its demands on Ireland must come first.
Some young Irish rang up the Gerry Ryan radio show last Friday morning. They fumed and screamed, but the chasm which exists between the generations was painfully evident. Gerry actually laughed.
When you no longer feel the stress of having no home, no security, you quickly forget what it is like. The airwaves were seized by older homeowners giving out to the young for spending all their money on drink and not trying hard enough to buy a house. Again, the young Irish listening to this were speechless.
It is common for the older generation which rules the airwaves and the national newspapers to proclaim that all the stifling characteristics of Irish society have been swept away. But in exchange for sweeping away all that they hated as young people the same ruling generation has bought into the absolute logic of the free market. In the 1990s they were in the perfect position to reap the benefits of this. Their houses are now worth fortunes. They can hardly be anything but delighted.
But the young Irish haven't seen those benefits of the free market. They see an Ireland led by brainlessness and naivety in the face of market economics. They are bewildered by the notion that the ruling generation think there is a future in all of this.
The atrocious housing situation, whereby the young Irish have been priced out of the market to a degree that could never have been imagined, is only a symptom of a future in Ireland that the young are dreading. The older generation seem oblivious to this.
Toner Quinn works in publishing.