An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Sharon Keogan (IND), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I would like to address two things, the first of which is a recent report from the Ombudsman for Children warning of the rise of so-called extremism among the youth. The first thing to say is that extremism does not appear out of thin air. It is a response, a backlash, to a deteriorating situation in this country. Furthermore, when we look at what has been labelled as extremist among the legitimate cases, we too often find views that most people for most of history would have called common sense.
This is the Government's latest trick. Slap the word extremist on anyone who dares to question it. It is a way to villainise the ordinary people, ignore its own horrific level of failure, and scapegoat the natural backlash as the work of some shadowy agents spreading addictive, nefarious ideas online. This study from the Office of the Ombudsman for Children is a perfect example of that. It is framed as if young people are clueless victims, brainwashed by extremists lurking in the dark corners of the Internet. That framing is insulting. It assumes our young people have no agency and no ability to think critically, and we are conveniently led to the conclusion that the State must swoop in to save young people from themselves.
Let us look at the methodology. Twenty-eight schools, hand-picked from a list of 200, many already linked to OCO programmes, voluntarily participated. There was no random sampling, no definition of extremism and no weighing for gender imbalance. This is not robust research; it is a narrative dressed up as data. For that reason, it is worthless as evidence for policy.
If the Government wants to understand why people are angry and are pushing back, it should start looking in the mirror. The greatest extremism in Ireland is extremism of failure. We have failure on housing, immigration, law and order and basic governance, and until that changes, the backlash will continue, no matter how many surveys are published pretending otherwise.
The subject of tone deaf responses leads me to the second issue I want to raise. We have all seen the Government's video, released over the weekend, telling young people how to cope with moving back in with their parents. How to cope is not policy; it is capitulation. It is an admission that the Government has failed so spectacularly on housing that the best it can offer is a demeaning pep talk. Instead of fixing the crisis it created it is telling our young people to grin and bear it, as if losing independence is just a lifestyle choice. That is not leadership; that is gaslighting.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09