The social contract is an understanding, long perpetuated by parents, believed by children and lived by older adults, that if they worked hard at school, a good “permanent and pensionable” job would follow, and then a house and a life that moves forward in the traditional way.
But times have changed and life looks very different for those hoping to follow in the footsteps of the generations that went before. We spoke to some young adults to see if all the certainties they were taught to expect are now just a fairy tale.
Katie O’Reilly, 22: ‘Rent is astronomical. I’m stuck at home’
Lives with her mother and sister in Tallaght
O’Reilly says her mother “really, really did value the importance of education” and “I was marched to school every morning without fail, right up until I did my Leaving Cert”.
Her mother “would very much push us to get these results to bring us out of the situation. She wanted better for us than what she had for herself.”
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O’Reilly, who graduated from Maynooth University with first-class honours in social science, is the first person in her family to get a degree, she says. But the college experience was very different for her generation, she says. “Maybe one, two maximum, of my friends were able to find accommodation ... Most of us were commuting, which means we’re literally doing our studies and we’re leaving. There’s no hanging around, joining societies, going out. There’s none of that any more. It’s all completely gone, which you would [have seen] as the traditional college experience. It’s so hard to make those connections any more, because everyone’s just in and they’re out.”
She worries about getting a permanent, pensionable job in the future. She has a temporary job for summer, but doesn’t know what will happen after that. She has sent off lots of CVs and applied for graduate programmes in private companies. “I’ve literally got nothing back,” she says.
“I don’t see myself moving out [of home] for the next five to 10 years. It’s just not viable. The rent is astronomical ... I’m stuck at home. Don’t get me wrong, my mam and my sister are great, but it just doesn’t feel natural ... You feel like you’re stuck in the stage of being teenagers.”
She applied for social housing but was not eligible. “With the amount of work that I’ve put into my degree, and the education that I have, and all of the work experience and other educational certificates, it should really be a last resort, but it’s becoming the only resort for a lot of people my age. If you are even eligible.”
She believes the social contract has been broken and says this has taken its toll on her mental health. “I just find sometimes you’re a bit hopeless. You’re working for all this and you’re seeing yourself stuck in the same position.
“When you look back at my parents’ generation, when my mam was 23 she had a mortgage. She had me. She was moved out [of her parents’ house]. She was a lot more progressed in life than where I would be.”
O’Reilly thinks the Government has “100 per cent” forgotten about people like her.
Leo Galvin, 19: ‘It’s not really optimistic’
Law and criminology student
Galvin believes “all those promises you would have had in the social contract have gone”. He doesn’t think the changes are “in any way a good thing”.
He doesn’t think it’s the older generation’s fault. “Older people do want the best for younger people,” he says.
“There’s a really small group of people who have a great deal of power who have decided that instead of working towards the betterment of society, they’ve more so worked towards a betterment of themselves.”
He feels “to a certain degree you can see that stunted growth. Couples who are still living in their parents’ house who are really struggling ... I can see that kind of struggle in my own future,” he says. “It’s not really optimistic.
“After Covid and everything, there was already a certain degree of stunting in how much life I’ve lived,” he says. “I have been trying to make up for that a little bit, and open myself up to new experiences.”
He believes “that old ideal is still there. Your parents will always say, ‘Oh do your best at school and you’ll succeed, or you’ll get a house.’ And what success looks like is a house, a family, that nuclear family.
“That traditional idea is still there, but I just know it’s not really achievable, at least in a young person. I don’t see that ever happening for me. I’d love for it [to], but I just don’t think it’s going to happen.
“I have resigned myself to it,” he says. “I do feel cheated on a broader scale ... What my parents grew up with was the concept that you go to college to develop yourself as a person. And then when you go into a job, they’ll train you. And then you’ll go into employment and they’ll look after you. And then when you retire, you’ll be looked after as well. And I don’t feel that’s going to happen.”
Aisling, 31: ‘Do I freeze my eggs? How long are we going to be waiting to start a family?’
Works in finance
Aisling and her partner, who is a tradesman, have been together for nine years.
She believes “the social contract is completely broken. That was ripped up 10-15 years ago. That contract doesn’t stand any more.”
Getting a pensionable job is something her parents had told her was important. She has recently got one. “I have worked since I’m 17 and I have absolutely nothing to show for it,” she says.
“The plan was education, a good enough job that will carry us through, a pensionable job, then a house, get married, and then have kids ... It’s out the window. It’s up in the air. It’s literally paused. We don’t know what we’ll do.
“Everything is on hold to try and save this deposit [for a house]. And then, once we have a deposit, we will never be able to go into a bidding war. We’re not in a position. It’s never ending.
“It’s very hard to keep motivated, to keep positive. It does have an effect on your mental health. It has an effect on your relationship. Because it’s another stressor.”
She got engaged in 2022. “I wasn’t even that excited ... It was kind of like, ‘Yeah, well, we’re not going to be able to get married for a good while, because we need to focus on a house’. I’m not planning my wedding because I can’t afford to plan my wedding.”
She suspects the place she’s renting with her partner could be sold soon. “We don’t have that security. That’s why we’re not starting a family. And even now, do I freeze my eggs? How long are we going to be waiting to start a family?
“I don’t want to have to go through fertility treatment. But the way things are looking, that would be our only option,” she says. “I don’t want to bring kids into our current situation.
“We are lost. We are forgotten about,” she says. “No prospects. No future.”
Kevin, 37: ‘I’m looking at 40, and it’s only now that we’re talking about the big life decisions’
Works in media and grew up in a ‘very underprivileged area’
There was an idea “that if you worked hard, you did the right thing, you treated people with respect, you gave it your best effort, that life would ultimately be better,” he says. That “was a big part of the impetus that was upon people from my class background of getting out of the situation, getting out of poverty, and everything else”.
He believes his generation was failed by austerity measures during the last recession. Cuts meant he had to drop out of university as a mature student, he says. “I couldn’t find a job on a full-time basis to keep going because entry-level positions had turned to JobBridge.” The scheme, introduced in 2011 by then minister for social protection Joan Burton to provide internships for unemployed graduates, closed in 2016.
Kevin says what would be typical milestones have been delayed for his generation. “The housing crisis meant that we had to continue postponing our decisions ... We couldn’t either save or rent to live independently, and many of us ended up back in our parents’ box rooms, [and] ended up having our development, our further life, stunted in other degrees like conducting relationships, sex, etc.”
Kevin and his partner have had to put off conversations about future plans. “We’re at the point now, in our late 30s where the knock-on effects of austerity are everywhere,” he says. “I’m now in my late 30s, looking at 40, and it’s only now that we’re talking about the big life decisions. Anything from pets to marriage to house.”
The changing landscape of media means he’s also wondering if the career he chose is an area he can continue in.
“The social contract, as far as I’m aware, we were told as an aspirational thing as working-class kids. I don’t think it ever really existed.” In conversation with Jen Hogan
EXPERT VIEWS
Michelle Murphy: ‘We need a new social contract’
Research and policy analyst at Social Justice Ireland
“We need a new social contract, and we need a new conceptualisation of what that means,” says Michelle Murphy. “It requires a conversation.”
“Social contract” – as the justice advocacy organisation has highlighted in recent years – is a centuries-old term now used to refer to the implicit understanding that citizens contribute to the common good on the assumption that the State will ensure a minimum standard of living, the provision of essential social services and infrastructure, and the protection of their basic rights.
The housing crisis alone suggests that the State is not holding up its end of the bargain – as do child poverty rates. Difficulties accessing everything from school places and childcare to hospital beds also reflect fractures in the social contract that may have become harder to fix over time.
“You get to a situation where the deficit is substantial, and it will take a lot of investment to close the gap,” says Murphy. “But we do need some kind of reset.”
When people are delaying having children because of their housing situation, when single people’s ability to own a home is “almost off the table now” and when those who have children are “having to jump through hoops” to ensure they receive basic services, it all points to a broken social contract, she says. The impact on wellbeing can be profound.
Dr Malie Coyne: ‘Young people can feel stagnant, feel shame, feel helpless’
Chartered clinical psychologist and author of Love In Love Out
“We have this idea in a modern practical sense that if we stay in school, work hard, play by the rules, then society will reward us with a stable job, a home, the ability to raise a family, retire comfortably and have a say in our future,” says Dr Malie Coyne.
“But when the contract feels broken, when you try so hard, go to school, go to college, get a job, but then housing is unaffordable, jobs are not secure and hard work doesn’t lead to stability, people can feel betrayed by the system and the Government.”
The delayed independence that results can “weigh heavily” on mental health and alter people’s worldview.
“If young people are unable to leave the family home despite having a good job or advanced degrees, then they can feel stagnant, feel shame, feel helpless,” says Coyne.
Across age groups, people who once expected to own their own home but have now been forced to give up on that ambition can feel “a sense of failure, even though these barriers are not of their own making”. They might “experience grief for the life they thought they would have”.
Disillusionment and anxiety can follow. Economic barometers tell us that Irish people are anxious about the future. Consumer sentiment in 2025 to date has been “markedly more negative” than the levels recorded in 2023 and 2024, despite the strong performance of the Irish economy, according to the sentiment index published by the Irish League of Credit Unions.
Core Research, which collects the sentiment data and is part of the marketing group Core, separately tracks an age group it calls the Celtic Cubs, or 39-55-year-olds, and a group it calls the Triple Resilient, now aged 26-38.
The crucial difference between the two is that the younger group started to come of age after the financial crisis, meaning they entered the workforce just as employment and training opportunities dried up. They also endured the pandemic at a more formative age, while some may have absorbed the stress of parents dealing with negative equity during the property crash.
Core Research’s Predict 25 report, which explores hopes for the year ahead, found that the younger group were more likely to be interested in the State addressing mental health services and the provision of social and affordable housing, while there were also differences in how they viewed the role of work.
Some 43 per cent of 26-38-year-olds, for instance, hope that “mental health services are fully integrated into the healthcare system”, compared with 30 per cent of 38-55-year-olds, while some 61 per cent say they are interested in “working less, to enjoy the rest of life”, compared with 53 per cent of 38-55-year-olds.
If perceptions about work are indeed shifting, it is hard to disentangle that from younger generations’ awareness that making the traditionally “right” choices is no longer any guarantee of life progression as it was once imagined.
When the maths become impossible, and people know their earnings – current and future – are too low to allow them to get a mortgage or even comfortably pay rent, that alters the rewards work can offer, and the sense of purpose it gives people, too.
Challenges to our sense of self can “lead to a re-evaluation of what it means to be successful in life”, says Dr Coyne.
“Parents do face a dilemma about how to motivate their kids to pursue their education and careers when maybe the social contract isn’t as certain. The key is to emphasise the intrinsic value of learning, learning for the sake of learning, personal development for the sake of personal development,” she says.
“It’s also important for parents to validate their kids’ concerns and not dismiss them, not dismiss the reality. We need to help them stay hopeful and proactive as well.”
Despite everything that is thrown at them, younger generations display “amazing creativity and resilience”, she says.
Suzanne Feeney: ‘Both employees and employers are feeling it’
Country manager at recruitment firm Robert Walters Ireland
“In recent years, the younger cohort have been really affected by there not being the same number of opportunities when they come out of college,” says Feeney.
Robert Walters Ireland’s recent survey found that some 68 per cent of Irish employers had noticed a decline in employee morale, with only a quarter of Irish professionals saying they found their roles fulfilling.
“There’s definitely something there. Both employees and employers are feeling it,” says Feeney. Employers need to understand, firstly, that younger workers are suffering the brunt of the housing crisis, while if employers want a “purpose reset”, she says, it is vital they allow opportunities for staff to progress.
Finian Murphy: ‘People are investing in friendships and families’
Marketing director at Core
There is an “optimism gap” between persistent scepticism about systemic reforms and a desire among many to seek out hopeful news and embrace new ideas, according to Core. Younger generations’ coping tactics include a greater focus on wellness, social activism and relationships, says Finian Murphy, marketing director at Core.
“People are investing in friendships and families, even in the likes of getting a good night’s sleep. These are all things that are within our own control.” - Laura Slattery
