Predictably, there was a lot of hot air on radio and television about the Irish Times/TNS mrbi ‘youth’ survey, the results of which were published last week. The Times milked it for all it was worth, running the story over three consecutive days. It was obviously an important item on their promotional agenda.

Others played along dutifully as if it was all rather shocking stuff. But it wasn’t. In fact the response of most sensible people was – so what?
A lot of teenagers drink. Plenty of them have sex. Cannabis is widely available and 49% of those aged 23 to 24 have tried it. Most of the, ahem, young adults surveyed think that politics is irrelevant to them. Bertie Ahern and George Bush are among their least admired people. Religious belief is stronger among females. And 82% of the age group live in their parental homes…
As one colleague pointed out, change a few of the names and, in most of the headline areas, the survey could have been carried out in 1993 or 1983 – or even 1973, for that matter. In fact the only shocking thing is the number of 23 and 24 year-olds who still live at home, and there is an obvious explanation for this: the price of houses and apartments, especially in Dublin, is prohibitive so people hang around in the house a little bit longer than might be good for everyone, including themselves.
A close look at the figures on drinking suggests that someone’s leg was being pulled at least some of the time. 5% of those surveyed told their interviewers that they’d drink 15 drinks or more on ‘a good night out’. If that suggests a bit of spoofing, the figures for the consumption of ecstasy sound equally unconvincing, albeit in the other direction. Only 12% have tried it. Only 3% take it regularly. And drug use in general is reflected as dropping among those in the 23 to 24 year age group. Far from being sensational, this stuff is just hard to believe.
Which may not be all that surprising, given that the number sampled was just 1,000. I know that this is within the guidelines laid down by the Marketing Society of Ireland – but it doesn’t take a whole lot of piss acting or even plain fear of revealing the truth to skew something when the sample is this small. Teenagers are past masters at messing and having a laugh with anything that smacks of officialdom. And you don’t need a survey to let you in on that bit of wisdom.

All told, it was a far duller story than one that also hit the papers during the week, but which didn’t receive remotely the same kind of attention. I’m talking about the fact that the Labour Party has identified non-nationals as potentially a key factor in upcoming elections.
Looking at the latest census results published earlier this year, I was impressed by the number of foreign nationals now resident here. The figure is in excess of 320,000 – and that is likely to continue to rise, with an increasing number from Britain and other parts of the EU in particular basing themselves in the Republic.
What hadn’t struck me immediately was that, if they register, the vast majority of adults among that group will be entitled to vote. This amounts to almost 10% of the electorate – making immigrants potentially a powerful force if they can be mobilised effectively. It is a factor which may, in itself, change the nature of the political discourse on the issue of immigration. Will it soften the cough of the likes of Ivor Callelly, who has – to put it mildly – been unsympathetic to newcomers to these shores, to realise that his seat may be vulnerable to the immigrant vote? Indeed it might.
This reflects a genuine truth about the changing face of Ireland, which isn’t even remotely touched on in the ‘youth’ survey. Ireland has been transformed, in a relatively short period of time, from a monocultural society into one that boasts a significant level of ethnic and cultural diversity. Now I don’t give a shit about people’s paranoia on the subject. For me, it is a good thing, bringing a fresh sense of vibrancy, industry, colour and excitement into Irish life and challenging the narrow assumptions we’ve tended to harbour about who we are and what our place in the world might be.
There are of course challenges involved. Are we capable of adopting the more successful modern European model and evolving into a truly integrated multi-cultural society? Can we avoid the trap of segregation that has divided so many cities in the US – and parts of Britain too?
Based on the assumption that you can regulate and even bully people into ‘better’ behaviour, too much public policy-making is concerned with trying to put the national finger in a non-existent dyke, agonising over the effects of teenage drinking, the sexualisation of children and the malign influence of the media in general. The focus on drink, drugs and sex in the Irish Times youth survey feeds into this kind of paranoid bunker-thinking.
Good public policy making should focus rather on the positive and beneficial things that really can be engineered (like taking the LUAS line over the Red Cow roundabout, but that’s another story!) In this respect, the government should now be planning the way forward for the new multi-cultural Ireland. But there’s nary a sign of it.
If we play it smart, we can avoid ghettoisation and promote harmony and integration.
Knowing the way things operate here, we’ll probably get around to thinking about it when it’s too late.
And then we can do the survey to confirm it.