Letter to the Editor: Let the young people go back to work
It shouldn’t be forgotten that following the last recession, it was the young people of this country who paid the biggest price, in the short term through unemployment, emigration, and severe cuts to social welfare payments and in the longer term not being able to even rent a place of their own, having to continue to live with their parents, thereby effectively delaying their progression to full adulthood and for many never having the opportunity to start their own family.
Many of the young people who were in their early 20s and 30s in 2008, are now the people paying high rents for poor accommodation, working in low paid, insecure employment with little prospect of any improvement even before the lockdown resulting from Covid-19.
In fairness, society cannot ask them to bear the brunt of this crisis and given that they are young, healthy people it makes no sense whatever to confine them to their homes when they could be back at work, keeping the economy ticking over and thereby ensuring that the country can more quickly get back to normal whenever the health authorities believe the restrictions can be relaxed.
Although this lockdown is difficult for everyone, it is particularly difficult for younger people and parents with young families, who are enduring enormous sacrifices to essentially protect the health and lives of their older fellow citizens.
The present lockdown where everyone is subject to the same level of restrictions cannot continue indefinitely and for the greater good of society now is the time to accept that this virus affects different groups differently and therefore they should be treated differently and young people should be free to go back to work and get on with their lives as this is the only way that some degree of normality can eventually be restored for all citizens of the country.
