Next government will have to deliver on the ‘Youth Guarantee’

As a society we can’t afford to designate the 20s as a second decade of adolescence, writes Victoria White

THIS month she leaves for Bangkok. My young friend, 30 years old and fed up waiting for a permanent job as a primary school teacher, has decided to see the world instead of settling down in Ireland.

“If not now, when?” she asks. She’s still young and she’s always wanted to travel. But I’m left asking a whole different set of questions, like: “How can we be so stupid that we’re letting this young Wexford woman slip through our fingers?” Montessori-trained in the UK, she came home to do her Irish primary teaching qualification. She has vast experience with special needs, having worked in schools specialising in autism and in dyslexia. My autistic son Tom had the time of his life when she came to us to give him his “July Provision” and since then she’s volunteered to take him out quite often. She once cycled him five miles to Dún Laoghaire, bought him a gigantic ice-cream, and cycled him home again.