LABOUR councillor Joe Leddin believes that the housing crisis is having disastrous consequences in the lives of young people in Limerick.
Cllr Leddin was commenting in relation to new figures from 2022 that show that more than two in three people in Ireland aged between 25 and 29 (68 per cent) are still living at home with their parents.
“These Eurostat figures reveal the stark social consequences of the housing crisis, which represents a lived reality for too many of our young people in Limerick,” he told the Limerick Post.
“Unaffordable rents and skyrocketing house prices have meant that young people are living at home with parents for longer, putting off big life moments like living independently or moving in with friends or a partner. And this generational crisis is getting worse.
“The number of those living at home with their parents has doubled in a decade, and Ireland is way above the EU average — across the EU, on average only 42 per cent of those aged between 25 and 29 remain living in their parents’ home.”
The City West representative is of the view that there is a hidden cost to this, with young people ‘failing to launch’ their adult lives, because they lack the social structures that the State should be providing, “like access to a secure and affordable home, as well as access to other social supports like childcare and affordable healthcare”.
“Having your own home, a place to call your own is a fundamental human right. It provides a sense of stability and independence which is being denied to this generation of young people. It is impossible to live a fully empowered life as a young person from a childhood bedroom.
“Despite record employment levels, too many young adults in Ireland today are barely getting by. They are working hard, paying taxes and contributing to society, yet for far too many, Ireland feels like no country for young people.
“In order to address this crisis, we need to see a structural revolution in housing. Government representatives have displayed dismissive attitudes in response to Labour’s constructive proposals to increase housing supply and have presided over a failed planning system, 500 approved housing agencies and a state quango namely the Land Development Agency who have failed miserably to build a single house in several years,” he concluded.
