Members of the Southeast Technological University’s (SETU) kayaking club climbed out of the water at The Ferry Playground in Castleconnell, Limerick, as the rain poured down in the aftermath of Storm Bert last weekend.
Based out of the university’s Waterford campus, the students are practising ahead of the teams’ match at a Munster Polo League event at the University of Limerick. In the meantime, they’re busy making up their minds about who they are going to vote for in the election on Friday.
Housing, mental health services and public transport are the biggest issues on the minds of the students, all of whom feel the previous government did not deliver for young people.
Vice-captain of the club, Dean Horgan (20), is originally from Midleton in Cork, but was drawn to SETU by its Construction Management course. Now in second year, housing is the issue most to the fore.
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For the first few months of first year, Horgan found himself functionally homeless and was forced to sleep in his car just to attend lectures while he searched for a place to call home.
“Thank God I had my car, I had to sleep in it for the first month,” he said, having come to Waterford after unknowingly making agreements with unregistered landlords. “When I came down here to get into my accommodation, there was nothing for me there.”
Every day, he reported himself as homeless to the welfare team at SETU Students’ Union for his first month before he eventually found accommodation, now he is looking to the next government to ensure the next generation of students do not have to struggle the way he did.
“There needs to be more focus on student accommodation and protection of students in the housing market,” he said, pointing to classmates of his who are struggling so severely with the cost of living that they are skipping meals or turning to the college for help.
Horgan doesn’t believe the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael coalition government has delivered for young people. “They always wait until the last second before an election to make changes. When there’s a change in government, they bring out a budget which benefits the masses really quickly but doesn’t actually fix the problem.”
Cian Johnson (28), an alumni member of the kayaking club, feels the issue of mental health has not been addressed by the government.
“My biggest issue, bar of course housing, would be mental health. I’ve suffered in the past with my mental health and have tried to go through the system and it’s just, ‘Here’s a date in 6 months!’ Mental health is a serious issue, and it needs to be worked on.”
“Even a month [waiting for services] could be the difference between life and death. The system isn’t good enough and hopefully, whoever gets in, will see the problem there and fix it.”
He feels the government has not delivered for young people. “I think they’ve made a lot of promises ‘We’ll do this, we’ll do that’ and it all just fell flat,” he says. “In my opinion, they have just been in power too long, we need new blood. I want Sinn Féin in, but I don’t want them in by themselves. I want them to go into coalition with anyone.
“It has been 100 years of different combinations of Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael and now it’s time to break that mould.”
Despite his reservations with the current Government, Johnson also expresses a preference for Fine Gael leader Simon Harris to get into Government due to the TD having secured help for his brother, who has autism, in response to a letter from the family.
“I’d just rather people weren’t homeless, but maybe that’s too much to ask for,” lamented one of the club’s committee members Evan O’Dowd. Originally from Donaghmede in Dublin, the 24-year-old made the move to Waterford to pursue a degree in engineering and move out from his family home.
In the beginning, he was nervous of how he would find life in a different county and moving out for the first time, he said, but the biggest issue he faced in his degree was the costs of living and renting.
“All of my money goes on food, transport. and rent; financially it can be tough to be a student,” O’Dowd says, adding that he would favour political parties who would increase the supports for college students.
Later in the day, at the team’s water polo event, amid the screeches of the polo referee’s whistle, students spoke about the need for better transport links in the country.
Second-year exercise science student Jess Dozio (19) from Mayo said she is one of the “lucky” students to get university-provided accommodation.
She feels the west of Ireland has been left behind by the government and says that the trainlines linking her to Waterford are challenging, “The journey from door-to-door takes me about five hours,” she says.
“I get the train down [to Waterford] usually and I have to get two trains to go down and three on the way back – I have to change trains at Kildare and again at Portarlington. Out in the west we are kind of forgotten about for trains and transport.”
She hasn’t made up her mind on who she will vote for yet but said that she “would definitely” vote for a party that would improve rail services.
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