“My generation can’t afford houses, my generation can’t afford to have children, my generation are either leaving the country or jumping in rivers, that’s my generation, man. My generation is dealing with neo-liberalism, economic policies that are similar enough to the economic liberalism at the time of the famine. It’s a laissez-faire system where the resources of the country are being sold for private interests and our generation, my generation, is screwed.”

“The lads that were in 1916, they were the same age as my generation, they were from the ages of 18 up to their mid-thirties, do you know what I’m saying? So my generation is looking at them, going, ‘yeah they had it incredibly hard’ and obviously we have it hard as well, is that what we don’t have, my generation, we don’t have the idealism that they had because that was a time of idealism.”

“At the time of 1916, with World War 1, you just had the industrial revolution, you had the enlightenment, you had all of that, that was a time of idealism, we don’t have that, we’re gone past postmodernism, we’ve just got despair and confusion.”

Blindboy Boatclub, from The Rubberbandits, speaking on The Late Late Show last Friday – striking a chord with many on social media.

Further to Blindboy’s appearance (above), Denise McGrath, from Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary, wrote into The Ryan Tubridy Show on RTÉ Radio One this morning praising Blindboy’s observations.

The 24-year-old, who’s been working in the local SuperValu since she was 16, then spoke with Ryan on the show this morning.

She said:

“[Blindboy] just cut straight to it. A lot of people fluff around and, as he said, my generation, they’re either jumping on planes or jumping off bridges. It’s true, it’s grim. But it is the life of the younger generation at the minute…I would love to have my dream job…I would love to be an English teacher. There’s a glass ceiling that we can’t get through…Our generation, we’re sidled with the USC charge, you’re sidled with extra taxes – to chip away at the debt that was incurred by the generation above us, the politicians who are supposed to be in charge of our country…They’re the ones who are going ‘oh we need the younger generation to vote for us’ but what are they going to do for the younger generation?“

Listen back to The Ryan Tubridy Show here

Thanks Lynne

Meanwhile…

David O’Carroll, at Temple Bar-based design agency Miller87, writes:

Blind boy’s mini speech about our generation struck a chord with us as everyone in our office is between 24 – 30…We were talking about it for quite a while so we said we’d create a little Illustration (above) as we were inspired by Blindboy’s honesty and directness.