I want to raise with the Tánaiste the issue of youth unemployment. The youth unemployment rate in Ireland now stands at 59%, which means that for every five young people in Ireland, three of them have no job.

The EU average is 17%. It is considered to be extremely high in Spain at 40%, while in the UK, the rate is 14%.

I am sure the Tánaiste will agree that young people have been unfairly targeted over the course of this pandemic. They have been working incredibly hard within their own families and communities over the past year and over the past number of years they have changed Ireland for the better with their activism, engagement and campaigning. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman said yesterday that it was the energy and activism of young people that brought the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill to the Houses of the Oireachtas this week and he is right. We saw what happened earlier this year with their activism around the leaving certificate.

Our fear in the Labour Party is that we are losing a generation again, as we did ten years ago. What we and the National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI, are asking for is a task force on youth unemployment. The Government needs to take this issue seriously because in the economy and in the country presented to these young people before the pandemic, 40% of young people under 30 were in insecure employment and far too many were in insecure accommodation. They are looking at a return to "normal" which means insecure jobs and high rents and many of them are wondering why they should hang around. We lost a generation ten years ago; we cannot afford to lose another one. We have a youth unemployment or joblessness rate of 59%. This falls within the ministerial responsibilities of the Tánaiste. What priority is he giving to this issue? Will he listen to the NYCI and establish a task force? What is he, as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and his Government doing to tackle the issue of youth unemployment in Ireland?

I thank Deputy Ó Ríordáin for raising this issue, which is really important to him and really important to me too. It is true young people have suffered a lot in this pandemic. Different people and different sectors in our society have suffered in different ways. Women have suffered differently from men and older people have suffered differently from young people. Certainly, when it comes to the health impact, older people have borne the brunt of this pandemic in terms of lives lost and people hospitalised or made very sick as a result of the virus but the economic impact has fallen disproportionately on younger people in terms of jobs lost. Their lives have been interrupted, including their college experiences and their education, not to mention their inability to make friends, build relationships and do all the things younger people do. I very much agree with the Deputy's analysis and assessment in that regard and I certainly do not want us to lose another generation.

Too many times in the past we lost a generation of people to emigration due to economic mismanagement. Many people under 35 are now experiencing their second recession in their adult life, which is extraordinary. We need to make sure we do not have a repeat of the last recession, where younger people had to leave and go to other countries to seek opportunities.

We are going to respond to this in a cross-Government way. The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, is meeting NYCI this week. I intend to bring together the Ministers for Social Protection, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and Education and others to see what we can do to respond to this problem. Part of that response may involve a catch-up programme for people in education, which Deputy Ó Ríordáin has called for. That will be for people who have missed out on schooling. There will also be a response in terms of educational opportunities. It is already the case that there are more people participating in third level education than ever before in Ireland and we want to continue to expand that further. The Deputy will be aware of what the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science is doing in relation to apprenticeships and increasing opportunities in that area. We also want to make sure that once the economy reopens, younger people get their jobs back and have better terms and conditions. The Deputy will know of the work that is under way on sick pay, a living wage and auto enrolment.

Deputy Ó Ríordáin said in his opening remarks that we have 59% youth unemployment, meaning that three out of five younger people are out of work but that is not correct. We calculate youth unemployment in a particular way in Ireland and do not include people who are in education or training. When we say that 59% of young people are unemployed, that does not mean that 59% of all young people are unemployed. It means that 59% of young people who are in the workforce are unemployed, or 59% of young people who are not in education or training. Of course, a very large number of them are out of work because they would have tended to work in areas like retail, construction and hospitality, most of which will reopen, we hope, over the next couple of months. Typically, youth unemployment is double the older people rate but that is actually not what it seems because of the way it is calculated.

I know this is not a priority for the Tánaiste because I took the time last night to go through every single one of his tweets this year. Since January 2021, the number of times he mentioned youth unemployment came to the grand total of zero while the number of times he referenced Sinn Féin came to a grand total of 12. If I was a young person in Ireland, I would come to the conclusion that the Tánaiste's obsession is not with young people, youth unemployment, getting people jobs and saving this generation but with a political game with Sinn Féin. I counted zero tweets about youth unemployment but 12 tweets about Sinn Féin since the beginning of this year.

I just think that is a very cheap shot. The Deputy once again is engaging in virtue signalling, trying to make out that not only do we disagree with each other, he is also a better person than me and he cares more. That is just cheap politics, I believe. The number of times one tweets about something is not necessarily a reflection of how important one regards it-----

Not once; zero-----

If the Deputy wants, he can go back and read a speech I gave to the Young Fine Gael conference only last Saturday. A large section of that speech specifically dealt with this issue, namely, how young people have been impacted by the pandemic and what we intend to do. It was covered in the media and the fact that it was not tweeted is irrelevant. That was just a cheap shot, unfortunately.