Two-thirds of Irish university graduates will leave Ireland to find work

Ireland’s youth’s confidence in the future is lowest in Europe

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Irish graduates confidence in their future, in Ireland, has been dashed by the economy crash

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Two-thirds of Irish students believe they will not find a suitable job in Ireland and will travel abroad to find work.

The survey, the European Graduate Barometer, which questioned students across the continent found that the confidence of students in their country's future was particularly dire in Ireland.

Two thirds of the 5,780 respondents said they were concerned about their prospects. This is ten percent more that the average response across Europe.

John Logue, president of Ireland’s Union of Students, told the Irish Independent that Irish students' lack of confidence was at an all time low.

He said, “Lots of them are so despondent. They're handing in CVs and seeing them going straight to the bottom of a pile of 200 applications. There is a serious sense of despair."

He also said that it was no longer possible to compare Ireland’s current “brain drain” to that of the 1980s, due to the high-level of education among Ireland’s youth. During the 1980s it was largely semi-skilled young people who emigrated.

Logue continued, “The guys who are leaving now have degrees in accountancy and have financial backgrounds and we worry that there is no real reason for them to come back."

He criticized the Irish Government for not tackling youth unemployment or providing more initiatives for young graduates. He also warned that this mass emigration would cause bigger problems for the Irish State in the future.

The European Graduate Barometer survey found that Irish graduates looking for jobs in the IT sector expected that they would be looking for a job for up to five months and would probably apply to at least 35 companies. Those planning to search for a job in finance were even less optimistic.

Logue said Irish students were becoming despondent as their CVs were being added to piles with hundreds of others.

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