"They won't get a mortgage for a house anywhere they'd actually want to live or commute from; they'd be lucky to get a mortgage for an apartment.

And no one wants to raise children in an apartment.

"They'll have defined contribution, not defined benefit, pensions . . .

if at all. A more noticeable divide between rich and poor, not to mention unassimilated immigrants making up 20% of the population. Put that all together and I don't know what happens when there's a proper economic downturn.

But I don't want to be here to see it."

I hope he's wrong about it all. But there's only one thing about which I'm sure he's wrong: the assumption that this Disappointed Generation will be content to sit here in the rain and lower their expectations.

What if an underpopulated English-speaking country with much bigger, cheaper houses, more opportunities, wide roads that don't leave you stuck in traffic all day and year-round sunshine were to invite them in?

Surely it's madness to try and poach Ireland's best and brightest? Young people in Ireland are hugely optimistic. Some 72% of under35s expect to be better off next year, according to a survey carried out for Friends First. Shouldn't they be grateful, ask the greying property millionaires pulling the ladder up after them as they tut and sigh at the frivolous youth below. Sure, all that money spent on property speculation is money that wasn't invested in new Irish indigenous companies to create jobs and lasting opportunity for the future . . .

or in broadband access, roads, schools or hospitals.

So what? There's nothing you can do about it, punk.

Perhaps. Then again, the quality-of-life dilemmas and stress keep mounting. Own their own place and defer having kids? Have kids in some knock-off development, wife works to pay for creche, husband leaves for work before they're awake and returns when they're asleep. What part of that life has quality?

As more young families wake up to these dilemmas, they are going to feel betrayed. Assumptions that they will be content to lower their own expectations, and pass on even lower expectations to their children, will prove to be dead wrong.

I'm not the only one who thinks so. The governments of Australia and New Zealand are counting on it.

This weekend at the RDS, those two countries were trying to convince thousands of Irish people to head Down Under. Not for a backpacking holiday. For good.

Average Dublin house price: 412,000. You'd be lucky to get a three-bed semi-d in Lucan and a lifetime on the M50. Median Sydney house price:

312,000. For that you get a massive four-bed detached house with huge front and back gardens in Cherrybrook, in Sydney's northwestern suburbs. Deals in Melbourne are even better, with better public transport.

Construction trades are in high demand . . . something that may give pause to twentysomething joiners, plumbers, welders, carpenters or plasterers looking past the predicted end of Ireland's building boom in 2008 . . . as are IT workers, accountants, surgeons, midwives, dentists and engineers.

Salaries may be lower, but so are costs, and did we mention the beach?

In fact, the 'Skilled Occupation List' on the Australian government's website (www. immi. gov. au) has a huge range of occupations that qualify for consideration. They're even pitching that you take your SSIA money that will never get you that deposit and use it to start afresh in Oz.

People who believe that the Disappointed Generation will just stay here, with everlonger commutes from eversmaller houses they can't afford to own housing kids they never see, are only fooling themselves.

Ireland will have to persuade these people to stay.

Otherwise, look forward to an empty national nest with your Slovakian nurse handing you nice postcards from your grandkids on Bondi Beach.