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LAST UPDATE | 25 mins ago
THE MINISTER FOR Housing has said he believes it was “misconceived” for his department to share a video on social media offering advice to young people who are moving back in with their parents.
The video, which was posted online by the Department of Housing over the weekend, features two young people offering advice to anyone moving back in with their parents.
“Sharing a home with family members as an adult is very different to doing so as a child,” one person says before advising people to take the time to set up some “house rules” such as “paying rent and doing housework”.
“Moving back home might be enjoyable at first, but over time, it’s possible you might have some conflict. This is completely normal,” the second person says in the video.
Among the advice offered in the video is for young people to “help out around the house” by agreeing to take on some “household chores”.
The video was developed by the Housing Agency and Spunout, Ireland’s youth information and support platform.
Moving back in with family after living out of home can take some time to get used to. It’s okay to need & ask for support. For resources and advice see Supports Guide for Young People https://t.co/7lKHQW8wYo pic.twitter.com/shjtp0TsxQ
— Department of Housing, Local Government & Heritage (@DeptHousingIRL) December 6, 2025
It has been slammed as “a very bad joke”, “dystopian” and “tone deaf” by housing spokespeople from opposition parties.
Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne raised the matter with Housing Minister James Browne at the Housing Committee this afternoon.
The party’s housing spokesperson asked Browne if he thought it was “a ‘let them eat cake’ moment” for the Department of Housing “to share and promote such a video when the department the government is standing over and has contributed to and is dealing with and responding to this situation?”
He continued: “Do you accept that it’s caused huge hurt for people and it’s tone deaf for the hundreds of thousands who are struggling right now with the housing disaster?”
Browne said the video was prepared by Spunout and “put out by young people to talk to young people”.
“The Department of Housing didn’t have an involvement in it,” he said.
“An official in the Department of Housing were well intentioned, maybe misconceived, seen what young people in Spunout were doing and reposted it. Nothing more sinister than that about it, deputy.”
Hearne pressed the issue. “I think, as you said yourself, it was misconceived for the department to promote that video.”
“I think it was misconceived deputy in relation to that,” Browne said.
He said Spunout do fantastic work. “I think they deserve credit for their work and what they were doing trying to help other young people,” he said.
The department had no role in it. But what it did do, they did repost it. I think it was misconceived in the sense of reposting it.
He claimed that opposition was trying to “paint a picture” in the media “that somehow this was directed by myself or the department, or whatever the case would be”.
Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty also raised the video during Leaders’ Questions today, saying the decision by the government to share the video on social media has caused “fierce anger”.
“The video suggests that those forced to move back in with their parents should help around the house so that they will be viewed as adults,” Doherty said.
God almighty, Minister. How patronising is that?
He said he was aware that Spunout, “a very good organisation that does great work”, had helped with the video and said it was no reflection on them or the young people in the video, adding: “It shouldn’t be left to a youth organisation to clean up Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s mess.”
“Did anybody in government look at this video before it was shared on the official platforms by the Department of Housing? Did anybody think of how people would react?” he asked.
“Do you see why young people are offended and hurt by your government sharing this video, and do you accept that it is wrong for this government to make young people feel that they are somehow at fault for your housing crisis?”
Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers said the video and the information within it was not a direct Department of Housing campaign but was developed by Spunout and the Housing Agency.
“It was developed by young people and is based on their experiences,” he said.
Chambers said he recognised “the need to do everything we can to improve the availability and delivery of social and affordable homes right across our country”.
He said the government was focused on ramping up the delivery of these homes, adding that housing completions for the first three quarters of this year are the highest since 2008 and that the coalition was “stepping up” the intervention from the State.
“I accept that for many young people, rents are still too expensive in our cities and in towns in our country, and that’s why the intervention from the State is centrally important.”
Doherty responded by saying that Chambers “was not listening” to people.
“You don’t understand what it feels like if you’re in your 20s or 30s or even 40s, and you’re that person that is forced to move back in to your parents’ house,” he said.
“And the Department of Housing shares a video which talks about, ‘maybe you should do the dishes when you’re at home, so that you’ll be seen as an adult’. Can you understand how hurtful that is? The lack of hope that is out there?”.
Doherty said when he was in his 20s, he was married with two children and had built his home. “There’s an entire generation out there whose lives are on hold, or worse still, an entire generation out there that are no longer here because they have lost hope.”
Chambers accused the Sinn Féin finance spokesperson of “misrepresenting how
that video was made and created” and repeated that it was not made by the Department of Housing.
He added that he was “absolutely clear” that he wants to ensure that young people can have a future in Ireland with well-paid jobs and with more social and affordable homes built here.
Labour leader Ivana Bacik also hit out at the video, calling it “a move beyond satire”.
The State is even funding the excellent Spunout organisation to advise young people by video on how to cope with a move back to their parents house when it’s your government that has priced them out of the rental and purchase market.
“It would be comical if it wasn’t so serious, because 80% of the population are priced out of renting and 60% cannot afford to buy a house on their salary.”
She said Fianna Fáil “keep chasing the private developer model” for housing “even when presented with all the evidence that it does not work”, and asked Chambers when the government would accept that its policies are failing.
Chambers said €11 billion of State investment had been made available for the provision of housing and accused Labour of attacking “any measure that we make” in terms of making the housing market viable.
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