Simon Harris discusses recent Portlaoise visit on The 2 Johnnies Podcast

On a recent episode of The 2 Johnnies Podcast, Taoiseach Simon Harris made a guest appearance.

The Taoiseach discussed his recent Portlaoise visit on Friday November 1, where he met a young couple who had recently returned home from Australia.

"I was in Portlaoise earlier today, I met a young couple sitting in a new café. They've just returned from Australia, he's a teacher working in Dublin, she's a nurse about to start a job in Crumlin," the Taoiseach explained.

Watch below from the 34:57 minute mark:

"They worked out there for two years and now they've come back. I think the real challenge here is to try make sure that people who go out there do come back, and that they know that there is something to come back to," the Taoiseach stressed.

"And I accept that part of that is we need to build a hell of a lot more houses, to make it easier for people in rural Ireland to buy a house. 

"People left the country because there weren't jobs in the country, which isn't an issue now. We now have a job for anyone who wants one. We now want to show that when you work hard in this country you can actually buy a house," he explained.

"I'm not going to bamboozle your listeners with figures, but now 500 people each week are buying their first home, which is the highest figure in 15 or 16 years. We need those young people back, it's one thing to go for a couple of years for a variety of reasons, but we want them back," the Taoiseach finished.

Johnny B highlighted the amount of Irish nurses still emigrating in the search of better working conditions.

"3500 Irish nurses currently working in Australia. A nurse told my mother that of her class of 72 graduates, 71 of them had gone to Australia, she was the only one left," Johnny B said.