OPINION: Good news is you have two choices; bad news is they’re both terrible

As if the Irish Government haven’t let down enough people already but there are a few they like to repeatedly kick while they are down.
I used to laugh in disbelief and say “what will they do next?” Now, I’m genuinely afraid to ask that question and when I finally worked up the courage to read about the 2014 Budget I found myself despairingly muttering “God help us” and I genuinely meant it as a request from a higher force because to put it mildly, we’re screwed.
Ireland is lost. As well as an economic crisis we are also experiencing an identity crisis whether we know it or not. All these bad decisions have left Ireland a shell of its former self. The problem with these bad decisions is that they seem more and more irreversible. With every young person that leaves this country so does a valuable part of Ireland’s future. How many of us will return? How many of us would want to? Ireland has failed the youth and nothing to rectify this is being done. To Hell or to Canada. Out of sight out of mind.

Abandoners
We are the one’s paying for a crisis we had no control over and it seems the Government does not care. As far as a lot of them are concerned, we are the Ireland abandoners. Because I guess it would make sense for us to sit in that miserable country and pay for the mistakes of others. Others who are still making the same mistakes. And now with the new budget, those young people that are left can’t even live on the dole. Why didn’t Enda just get them all a one way ticket, or how about a prison ship to Australia? It would have been kinder.
And today I’m reading responses to the budget where some people actually have the nerve to claim that young people “of today” just want to sit on their backside on the dole anyway and they don’t want to work. Can you please enlighten me as to where all these available jobs are? Can you seriously tell me that every young Irish person abroad is on a holiday? A gap year? You are just as delusional as the people who run our country.
That presents another problem. Those are the voices of Ireland now. The Government is attacking the people who don’t have a voice, low income people, the elderly, children and now the young people who have no voice because they are not there anymore. I think it suits the Government well to have a majority of its young people abroad because that means less hostile opposition and of course, no change. The same people will continue to get into Government and the majority of young people aren’t there to do anything about it. My hopes of a vote being given to the youth abroad? That seems like an impossible request as opposed to a logical and fair idea.

No escape
So, foreign people will continue to come into our country as our benefits actually benefit them as opposed to the Irish and the Irish will continue to struggle to live, to work and eventually leave. And what about those who can’t leave? I feel bad for them. They have no escape from the bankrupt, jobless, corrupt prison that Ireland has become. And people are surprised by the rising depression and sucide rate in Ireland.
The protests outside the Dáil may have created only a little stir, but the heart that was in the idea is all that is needed to begin change. I may be of the dramatic variety but it is a dramatic change that is needed. I don’t throw this word around lightly but Ireland needs a revolution. Ireland calls for an uprising where the Irish people claim back their country that is being taken hostage by those in power. The current methods are not working, the people are not happy, not enough is being done to recitify this.
Ireland begs for a revolution.

Laura Rahill is a 23-year-old from Cavan who, having completed a Masters in English, and qualified as an ESL teacher but could not find work, moved to New York nine months ago. She has no plans to move back home.