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Emigration is back with a vengeance in Ireland

We (still) can’t all live on a small island

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Emigration is back. As a recent episode on RTE's "Prime Time"  showed in moving terms, what is most striking is how familiar it all seems. The same images of sorrowful parents, the same destinations, the same mix of fatalism and determination on the part of young people who probably thought that such events belonged to their parents’ time,, not theirs.

The conventional wisdom, espoused by many people including the present writer, was that mass emigration from Ireland was over. We now have smaller families; Ireland is a wealthier country; people are more educated and have better opportunities in a sophisticated modern economy. To cap it all, recent large-scale immigration cemented the impression of a country which had definitively turned the corner on a past marked by centuries of involuntary exile. From now on, others would come here. If we left, henceforth it would only be by personal choice.

What went wrong and how much of it was self-inflicted? One issue stands out immediately: the pernicious effects, in this as in other matters, of the speculative property bubble. Two EU countries had levels of employment in construction in recent years which were significantly greater than the EU average – Spain and Ireland. In both countries, more than a quarter of the entire male workforce was employed in construction – an unsustainable level. Today, these two countries have the highest unemployment rates in the EU, even if Ireland’s rate, at less than 13%, is some way behind Spain’s record figure of 19%.

The latest CSO migration data brings the picture up to April 2009, when the current crisis had arguably only just begun to bite. On the surface, it is not even all that alarming. The 18,400 Irish people who emigrated in the previous year were actually balanced by an equal number of returnees. There is nevertheless one striking factor: male emigration, more or less in balance with female emigration in recent years, jumped sharply. Moreover, there can be little doubt that the trend since then has been an upward one.

Such statistics have a human dimension. Last winter I was in the West Kerry Gaeltacht, an area with few sustainable economic opportunities outside the summer services offered to tourists and aspirant Gaeilgeoirí. I heard of many young men who had left education early in order to work in the booming construction industry. Now those same young men are leaving, cheated of a future in Ireland, just as people did in the 1980s and the 1950s. This time, in destinations such as Britain, increasing competition with workers from other countries is fostering a “race to the bottom,” making the chances of securing a decent and well-paid job that much more difficult.

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