When 26-year-old Ruairí Egan Barron left his job earlier this month, he had just one week to pack up his things from his childhood bedroom. Fed up with living at home, he applied for a graduate visa and has since moved to the United States. He had moved out of his parent’s house in Wicklow town to a place in Dublin twice before but soaring rents landed him back home.
“I’ve resigned myself to the fact I can’t buy a house in Ireland,” he says.
Of his friend group of about 14 people in their mid- to late-20s, he knows of just one who has moved out. “The rest of us are either back living at home or have emigrated.”
“I think since 2018, there has been that kind of despair of going: ‘This place isn’t for the young people in the country any more.’”
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Earlier this month Eurostat, the statistical body of the European Union, found that people in their late-20s in Ireland rank among the highest in the EU for living with their parents into adulthood.
In Ireland, 68 per cent of people aged between 25 and 29 still live in their childhood home, according to the findings. This is significantly higher than the EU average of 42.1 per cent and the sixth highest overall of the countries surveyed. It’s a startling statistic considering that as recently as 2019 the same survey put the proportion of Irish adults living with their parents at the much lower figure of 44.8 per cent. The numbers have spiralled since, with men, in particular, finding themselves either unable or reluctant to break the link with their childhood homes. According to Eurostat, 73.9 per cent of Irish men live with their parents, compared with 61.1 per cent of women.
Croatia has the highest number of people in that age cohort still living at home – at 80.7 per cent – followed by Slovakia, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. Denmark scored lowest, with just 4.4 per cent of those aged 25 to 29 living with parents, followed by Finland and Sweden, with findings at less than seven per cent.
[ Barely one-third of adults under 40 in Ireland own a home, report findsOpens in new window ]
By the time Egan Barron’s mother was his age, she had already bought her first house with his father – a sobering truth for him to contend with.
Having struggled to find work related to his education in politics, he took a job as a hospital administrator in Dublin. After rent, bills, food, car maintenance and paying off the loan he took out for his master’s degree, he had €40 per week for discretionary spending and nothing left over to save. On one occasion, he borrowed money from his parents to fix an issue with his car: “Yes, I was living away from home but I wasn’t fully financially independent.”
It’s a bit limited for a single first-time buyer. I wish they’d introduce a scheme for second-hand homes or even a restriction for private investors to buy out housing developments
— Ella Araojo
“[My parents] have been great and they’ve really helped me out but the fact I still need that is not a great feeling. I’ve done everything I was told to do. I was told if you [get your degree], you’ll get a good job and progress with your life. I’ve done all of that but I’m sitting here where I was 10 years ago.”
The social contract Egan Barron and so many others of his generation signed up to, he feels, has been broken by society at large. “It just feels like you uphold your end of it and then there’s just no contract there. It feels like we, as a generation, are being overlooked by the people in power.”
Ella Araojo, aged 27, is also still living with her parents. “I am a microbiologist for a pharmaceutical company, which would make you think I could afford to move out,” she says.
She lives in Naas, Co Kildare, and commutes to Blanchardstown five days a week. She is saving to put down a deposit on a house of her own in a Dublin commuter town, such as Meath or Kildare.
Looking at Government schemes aimed at helping first-time buyers to purchase a home, such as the Help to Buy and the First Home schemes, Araojo says: “It’s a bit limited for a single first-time buyer. I wish they’d introduce a scheme for second-hand homes or even a restriction for private investors to buy out housing developments.”
There are, nonetheless, “good aspects” to living at home, she says. “I see my family often, I’m not paying extraordinary amounts of money to pay rent on a bedroom that’s probably going to be smaller than what I have now but [triple the cost].”
People don’t want to go to their big manager job and then come home and their mam has their dinner for them
— Siobhán Smyth
Watching some of her friends buy and rent properties with their partners is frustrating, however, she says. “They’re out there setting up for their independent, adult life and it’s difficult to do that in the comfort and confinement of my childhood bedroom. You feel stunted, kind of left behind in that sense.”
She previously rented with a former partner but, now, without that second income to foot the bill, she’s back where she started.
“You’re saving up for your 10 per cent [mortgage] deposit. You’ve read every article on how to save money and what steps to take on how to start your mortgage but, then, you open up Daft.ie and see what’s out there in the market, you’re disappointed and unsure of whether it is worth it in the end, with all the interest rates and hidden costs of owning a property.”
While Thomas Monaghan’s childhood bedroom in Co Mayo is a place of comfort for him, it also represents regression after living independently in Dublin for eight years. The walls are plain with the odd collage of childhood photos dotted around to colour the space and a chest of drawers has some old sports trophies standing proud.
Amid rising rents in the capital and difficulties with his landlord, the 27-year-old marketing and events worker moved back in with his former foster mother. “It was a tough decision at the time,” he says. “You leave all your friends behind. You leave your independence behind. If my foster mother had not been able to let me back in, I would have had nowhere to go.
“With spiralling costs, I found when I was in Dublin I was having less and less in my pocket every week. I have friends [who pay high rents] in Galway, Limerick, Cork – it’s not just in Dublin. I just don’t think it’s a great place for a young person to grow up at the minute. I think it used to be.”
Monaghan plans to sit tight, save for another six months or so and leave the country. “As much as I love Ireland, I feel like Ireland doesn’t love me very much at the minute. I think I’ll be packing my bags and going out to explore the world.”
Siobhán Smyth (27) who works in advertising and lives with her parents in Saggart, Co Dublin, says her goal is to move out by the time she’s 30 and perhaps go to Australia. “I don’t want to be at home forever. I only turned 27 two weeks ago and even that has given me such a shock. I am a really driven and independent person and it has been hard for me, mental health-wise, knowing that I’m still at home at this age.”
Living at home can “affect your identity as an adult”, she says. “People don’t want to go to their big manager job and then come home and their mam has their dinner for them, or is giving out to them about something. They’re still your parents at the end of the day, there’ll always be that dynamic.”
For Egan Barron, the stress of making it on your own in Dublin has been too much and last Friday, he made the move to Philadelphia in the US. “The rent mightn’t be much cheaper but what you’re getting for it is much better,” he says.
If he were to move back to Ireland in the future, he says, he would be worried that his own children would be forced to leave the country too. “To the point where I’m not going to have children,” he says. [My girlfriend and I] have decided that unless we both get ourselves into a position to be earning enough money to comfortably put a child through education, that it’s not fair on them to struggle.”
