The Wren Report

The recent Irish Presidential election and the race to be Mayor of New York may be worlds apart, but they do share one striking resemblance. An older generation of voters, telling their juniors that they must vote for the ‘safe pair of hands’. In Ireland that was Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, in New York it’s Andrew Cuomo.

But a safe pair of hands for who?

In 2021 the ESRI published research that showed that young workers in Ireland are financially worse off than their parents. Fine Gael presided over that.

In 2024 the National Youth Council of Ireland found that 7 out of 10 Irish people aged 18-24 were considering emigrating. Fine Gael presided over that.

This year we’ve learned from the central bank that the wealthiest 10% of households hold almost half of the country’s wealth. Fine Gael presided over that.

Despite all that, there were serious people, seriously suggesting to young people that Catherine Connolly was too much of a risk to vote for. There was the theory that if not for a video of Catherine Connolly doing keepie uppies, that she wouldn’t have captured the youth vote as she did. Pundits and columnists alike have suggested that “vibes politics” as coined by the Financial Times, is the only possible reason Connolly captured the youth as she did. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what young voters are feeling.

There’s a harsh truth that those over a certain age are not willing to accept, not just in the media, but even at the kitchen table at home. That truth is, that it’s the older generations that sapped the hope away from their children and their grandchildren that has directly led to the rise of vibes based politics.

It’s the great cognitive dissonance of our time and anyone under that age of thirty five has certainly heard. Our young people aren’t leaving the country because of successive generations keeping Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in constant government, no it’s because of that damn phone or the five euro coffee they can’t help but buy themselves. It’s not because housing prices are now eight times higher than the average income, compared to around three times the average income in the 1980’s, that couldn’t possibly be it.

Forgive me if you have heard this one before or perhaps even said it yourself, but the classic “We had to work just as hard as you, it’s not like it was easy when we were trying to buy a house”, just does not wash.

If we want to understand why young people aren’t voting or are voting in ways that people of an older generation can’t quite understand, we have to be honest about the root causes. those who bought houses in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, didn’t work any harder than the people trying to buy homes today. The landscape they were buying in was fundamentally easier.

The problem is, they can’t admit it.

If you use data from the CSO and the Nevin Economic Research Institute you are able to estimate the mortgage repayment for the average young working couple in Ireland since the late 1980s. Comparing that data to today, a young working couple would need to set aside the equivalent of 45% of their annual disposable income in recent years to afford a 10% downpayment on a home, versus 27% in the late 1980s. In Dublin, this rises to 55%, more than double the 26% that would have been needed in the late 1980s.

According to Central Bank data, the typical first-time buyer is 35 the highest age on record. So is it any wonder why young people wouldn’t see Heather Humphreys, who was a cabinet Minister overseeing this, as a safe pair of hands.

If you’re doing well, both Humphreys and Cuomo in New York are a safe pair of hands, but look around, how may young people are doing well?

If you’re struggling to find any young people to ask, try Dublin Airport you will surely find a few checking in for their flight to Canada or Australia.

Why did young people turn out for Catherine Connolly? Was it vibes based politics?

No.

Catherine Connolly captured the youth vote because she latched onto something that many of her peers let fade away for the younger generation.

Hope.

It was as simple as that. It doesn’t matter that the President is a mostly ceremonial position, young people wanted to see someone in the Áras that represented a hope that has nearly been extinguished.

If we want to talk about why younger voters are not engaging with politics as much as they could be, the answer is right there, it is the absence of hope. No hope of owning a home of their own, no hope that half of their friends who are scattered across the world will ever come home, no hope that this government will ever actually help them out.

It’s not young voters who ensured that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael got to return to power.

So, stop telling them not to vote for hope, the few that haven’t emigrated yet need it more than ever.