Yesterday, there was a report by the National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI, that found that seven out of ten young people feel they want to leave Ireland. Those figures are not just a lifestyle choice, which is very obvious from the research it did. It previously carried out research that found that nine out of ten young people feel the employment opportunities are not there for them, which is a shocking statistic. The NYCI did that report and I hope it will be considered in the budget. We could have a debate around this but particularly about keeping young people in our country. I introduced a Bill last year on the abolition of some minimum rates of pay, but unfortunately it was shot down. One of the reasons that is cited in this recent report is pay. Because of the cost-of-living crisis, young people feel they have no quality of life here because they are on low wages. That is one thing for which they are calling. Another thing they are calling for in this report is that the lower rates of jobseeker's allowance for underage groups would be the same so that everyone would have the same rate of pay for jobseeker's allowance. They also called for free public transport for under-25s. I think these are very reasonable measures. We can see the success of targeted measures. Credit has to be given for targeting free public transport for those aged under eight. That worked really well. We have an opportunity here to revisit the Bill I brought in about the abolition of sub-minimum rates of pay for young people. Trade unions are behind this. This statistic shows that young people are choosing to live abroad because the wages are not meeting the cost of housing and cost of living here. We have to acknowledge that in this House. I would love to have further debate about it.

I, too, want to raise the issue The Irish Times covered, and which my colleague has covered as well, of the tens of thousands of Irish people who are considering emigration. In February of last year, I raised the alarm bell on this issue and since then, well over 62,000 people have left the country. Let me say that again; it is over 62,000. That is the population of Drogheda or Dundalk. In fact, let me give the Leader another visual. We were all touched this year to see the images of Mayo winning the Sam Maguire Cup and the crowds in Croke Park cheering and singing. Now, I want the Leader to imagine Croke Park empty and silent because that is the number of people who have left in the past year alone. That is the number of people we have failed. Is this an abject failure by the Government? Let me be absolutely clear; it is. If we have a bumper surplus budget and if GDP and growth are up, why in God's name is this happening? We have failed young people on housing. We have failed to develop a real economy in industries that can employ them. We have failed to build liveable towns and cities where they can work and raise families. Ultimately, we have failed to deliver a liveable nation. On the flip side, when we question the open-door policy madness our Government calls an immigration policy, we are told that we need workers. We had the workers. As many as 600,000 working Irish people have left the State in the last two decades. These were mostly educated young people on whose education and training we spent billions of euro, and what do we do? We happily ask them to live with their parents until they are 40 if they are not happy to have their pay cheques extorted by rents and high bills. We say, "If you don't like it, tough - pack your bags and leave". We could do a hell of a lot better for our young people in this nation. We certainly need to do that because we are losing them. We are paying our education system to take our young people out of this country. What is happening is scandalous.