When the Department of Housing re-shared a video last week advising young adults on how to move back in with their parents, the national reaction came in two waves: confusion, then a full-body cringe. The two-minute clip, originally produced by SpunOut and the Housing Agency, offers helpful tips like “set boundaries,” “talk openly,” and “maybe contribute to chores.”
In other words: guidance for people who already feel like they’re failing at adulthood, brought to you by a government that spent the last decade making it nearly impossible for them to succeed.
The video itself isn’t the most shocking part. SpunOut produces youth-support content all the time, and nothing in it is offensive. What is offensive is the government’s lightning-fast attempt to distance itself from it the minute the backlash arrived. As TDs, young renters, and pretty much anyone alive in Ireland started asking why a housing-strapped generation was being handed emotional-intelligence tips instead of affordable rent, the Department quickly clarified:
“We didn’t make the video. We just shared it.”
Which, if anything, raised more questions. Because when public anger is boiling over, the ‘we only pressed the retweet button’ defence is not quite the political shield they seem to think it is.
Opposition TDs called the campaign “tone-deaf,” “patronising,” and “dystopian,” while social media users did what social media users do best: ripped it apart with the speed and precision of a Leaving Cert student tearing open exam results. Social Democrats TD and housing spokesperson Rory Hearne said: “I was falling over myself laughing, going ‘is this Waterford Whispers?”
Even RTÉ had to ask the Taoiseach to explain the logic behind a government promoting a guide for moving back home. That conversation, unsurprisingly, did not help.
What makes this so farcical is the context. According to the CSO, 41% of 18–34 year olds now live with their parents, many not by choice but by sheer economic gravity. Meanwhile, the Growing Up in Ireland study shows that, six in 10 25-year-olds are back under their childhood roofs. These are not people in need of tips. These are people in need of housing, that elusive social good we used to have before “the market” became our national landlord.
So, when the government responds to a housing crisis of its own making by sharing a video about setting boundaries with your mam, it lands somewhere between tragic and darkly comedic. The satire writes itself, because the situation is already satire.
To make matters weaker, and “weak” is the most generous term available, the Department tried to shield itself behind SpunOut, saying essentially:
“…seen what young people in Spunout were doing and reposted it.”
As though the public were upset about the cinematography or choice of actors, and not the existential dread of realising the State now encourages its young adults to retreat into childhood bedrooms as a legitimate long-term plan.
If anything, the response highlighted exactly why young people are furious. Rather than owning the problem, the government chose to sidestep responsibility, leaving SpunOut and the Housing Agency holding a bag they didn’t pack. It reads less like leadership and more like your group project partner uploading someone else’s slides and insisting they “contributed.”
In the end, the video will fade. The outrage will simmer. But the message, the real one, not the scripted one, is hard to ignore:
Ireland’s housing crisis is so entrenched that living at home into your late 20s and 30s is no longer an exception; it’s institutionalised. And the government’s instinctive reaction to public anger isn’t reform, but PR distancing.
Students and young adults don’t need communication tips. They need affordable accommodation, viable wages, and a government willing to say more than “that wasn’t technically us.”
Because until then, the joke continues, and nobody’s laughing.
*Editor’s note: The Department of Housing has since deleted this video from their social media accounts, however it still remains on both The Housing Agency Ireland’s and SpunOut’s social media accounts.
Daniel McGonigle is a third-year PhD researcher at the University of Galway and the Postgraduate Officer for the Students’ Union. He’s passionate about highlighting the importance of student activism and representation. When he’s not advocating for postgraduate rights he’s in the lab working on his COVID and muscle research.