Z generation set to have a big Mayo say in imminent election
by Caoimhín Rowland
Young people of Mayo you don’t know how good they have it and if they dare to voice concerns and choose to speak when not addressed by your elders, please take your luggage and be mindful not to let the door hit your backside as you pass through the boarding gate!
Fine Gael are top of the polls. It’s not the youth of Mayo who are dying for higher property prices, it’s the codgers who take a summer’s seasonal work in their cousins company in London as the pinnacle of worldly travel, enough to impart wisdom from a pedestal for a lifetime.
Returning Irish emigrés of an older generation would give Monthy Python’s Four Yorkshiremen a solid run for their money, if they had any money that is.
In the 1990s in Castlebar you could rent an entire property in one of the town’s many housing estates for 45 punts a week, or in plain modern parlance, that’s a little over €200 for a month’s lodgings.
Today hop on Daft.ie and, as a health warning to the elderly, please do so only if you have had your stents recently checked, and you’ll struggle to find the same property for less than €1,600 but at least for nostalgia sake, it even has the same décor and mould!
Socialising, which was much of young Robert, who has accidentally become the ‘Cathleen Ní Houlihan’ who dared put into words his depressing experiences in this county capital, is also strikingly more expensive in comparison to the ‘90s.
A pint then would set you back 1.40 Irish punt. In today’s finances that’s €3.40. Change back from a fiver, God be with the days.
Reality is different for today’s pint aficionados. Many in the know now would jump at that price, most drinking houses across the county are much closer to double that.
Young people have continuously attempted to vote for change, but the bulwark of Irish ageing conservatism has stood strong.
During the financial crisis of the late ‘00s many of the then young folk received batons in the face for having the temerity to protest the transferring of public wealth into the coffers of private interests.
Many of whom took the boat soon after, anticipating the agony and pain austerity would cause to those most vulnerable. The youth then were correct.
So you voted them in again and scoffed at youthful ignorance steering toward Sinn Féin in 2020 for they knew nothing about the Troubles. Well while you were safe in Mayo or leafy south Dublin, you knew about as much of that Civil War than those born in the ‘00s.
This young generation is better than the last, indeed all new generations are and always have been marginally better than what came before it. That’s the definition of the word: “A body of living beings constituting a single step in the line of descent from an ancestor.”
Young people statistically drink less than their previous counterparts, they work for longer hours and are much better educated, thanks to you, our parents and grandparents who put in those hard yards in difficult days, balancing car loans, mortgages and college fees.
This debate surrounding Castlebar is becoming a bore, like the alcoholic who sinks 15 pints of a Sunday and on the way home grabs a fistful of blackberries and wakes up in shakes and shivers, committed to never eating those rancid berries again.
We fail to address the root cause of this depressing town, its dereliction, vacancy and capital classes so wealthy they can afford to allow their properties decay.
Inevitably, it’s the liveability of this fine town and many others across this wonderful county that suffer.
We’ve been daft, failing to point the finger at the men, and it’s always men who have ruled the roost over these lands, colonising public spaces and destroyed our built heritage for they’re merely afeard of the slightest change.
The same struggles persist but in different manifestations. It’s the mentality of the younger generation who are yet to channel their outrage at this nauseating bad trip that is growing up in Ireland.
We repeat the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, it’s literal insanity. We see corporate profits rise exponentially during a crunching cost of living crisis leaving 14,000 of our compatriots on the streets while dereliction goes unimpeded.
Young people don’t yet feel like they have ownership of Ireland, yet Millennials, an age group who received much vilification from FOX News anchors when they entered the workforce almost two decades ago, are now closer to their 50s than to their 20s and are still locked into Generation Rent.
Why is it that you’re disgusted at their younger peers Gen Z who speak up, like little Greta Thunbergs attempting to shake you awake from this bad dream and point toward what is blindingly obvious?
Why?