Emigration from Ireland is now at levels not seen since the Famine, according to a new report.
The Irish Independent reports that 87,000 people left the country in the year to April 2012.
The paper says that more than 200 people a day emigrated, figures not recorded since the Famine.
The report also says that the scale of the exodus is such that it has dented Ireland’s baby boom as so many young women have left.
The new figure is three times the emigration numbers recorded during the Celtic Tiger boom.
Britain attracted the largest number of Irish immigrants at 16,000 in the period studied.
Permanent migrants from Ireland to Australia soared by 33 per cent to 4,938 in a year.
Ireland is now one of the top 10 source countries for migration to Australia.
The report adds that the number of Irish availing of temporary work permits and working holiday visas in 2012 is likely to be on a par with the previous year’s tally of 21,753.
New Zealand awarded 4,564 Irish people work visas for the 2011/12 tax year, up nearly 40pc on four years ago.
Another 2,199 Irish citizens were granted work visas to New Zealand between July 1 and December 1, 2012.
The owner of Dublin-based migration company, Visafirst, Edwina Shanahan, told the Irish Independent that there is a huge amount of country-hopping by Irish people in the Australia/ New Zealand region.
She said: “So many are on temporary work visas or working holiday visas that last for a year, so when that is up they look to go to the other country if they can’t find a way of staying longer.”
Canada’s economic boom has made it one of the hotspots of Irish emigration with a fresh round of visas set to open for skilled trades people in the building sector.
The paper says some 5,293 temporary work visas were issued to Irish people last year, up 42 per cent on 2010, while another 662 got permanent status.
Vancouver-based relocation expert Ruairi Spillane said the western towns of Calgary and Edmonton are growing rapidly to challenge Toronto and Vancouver as favoured destinations for Irish emigrants.
The Kerry native revealed he’d been getting so many requests from Canadian construction companies looking for Irish workers that he quit his job last summer to set up moving2Canada.com.
Spillane said: “The mood is really positive in general. I love it here and I’m pretty sure most Irish people enjoy their time, though homesickness is an issue for many as it’s a long way from home.”
The United States granted some 17,143 Irish people and their families temporary work permits while another 1,533 obtained permanent resident status according to the US Office of Immigration Statistics for 2011.
The US figures were up from around 14,000 the previous year.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.WoundedKnee | Jan 03, 2013, 03:07 PM EST
Ireland North--Your mention of The Gathering prompts me to venture repeating what I have suggested on this site and elsewhere. Irish or of Irish heritage throughout the world should use The Gathering to expose the fraud that underlies it. A government which facilitates emigration by Irish and their replacement by foreign settlers should be condemned by all who love Irish heritage, tradition and identity--the very values that The bogus Gathering pretends to promote. Irish Americans should raise the Repopulation of Ireland by foreign settlers at every opportunity this year, and reject the spurious advertizing that falsely shows Ireland as still Ireland. We should actively boycott vacationing in Ireland, for we are only interested in Ireland as long as it is Ireland.
IrelandNorth | Jan 03, 2013, 02:54 PM EST
It was King James I who devised the policy of transplanting indigenous Irish as white slaves and indeptured servants to Barbados and Virginia, and settling their confiscated land with displaced Anglo-Scottish planter settlers. Achieved with radical finesse by the Lord Protector Oliver I in the mid-17th c. Continued (after Citizen Cromwell's abbreviated experiment in English republicanism) by sucessive restored British monarchs to the penal colonies by transportation in the 18th/19th c. Strange as it may seem, after 90 years of indigenous home rule (autonomy rather than independence) in the greater part of Ireland, the same dynamic is playing itself out. Why? Because, while the nationality of the rulers was substituted, their class was not. Hence, unconscious repetition compulsion! The class that has ruled most of Ireland since 1922 are merely Anglo-Saxons in drag. Redcoats in green jackets. And poor auld Joe Sixpack still has to follow the well trodden trail of his class predecessors. I repeat my assertion! Foreign immigration to Ireland is most popular with those who are least effected by it, and who couldn't care less about Irish emigration from Ireland. 20% immigration into a state with 15% unemployment is 5% insanity! No emigrants remittances (or Gatherins') without diasporic representations for the Scattered!
Smyrnian | Jan 03, 2013, 02:45 PM EST
Just a hunch, Curtis! :)
curtisjohnson | Jan 03, 2013, 02:37 PM EST
"Might be a wee bit of history missing here perhaps??" Ya think?
Smyrnian | Jan 02, 2013, 10:09 PM EST
The UK has always been more of a friend to Ireland than the US??? Hmmmm... Might be a wee bit of history missing here perhaps??
curtisjohnson | Jan 02, 2013, 09:18 PM EST
" YES MOST IMMIGRATED TO THE UK AND AS IM ALWAYS SAYING ITS THE UK NOT THE USA ..... THE UK ISS MORE OF A FRIEND TO IRELAND THEN THE USA .... " Emigration is easier primarily it is a member of the European Union not because of some type of benevolence (the origins of mass immigration are in the elites desire for cheap labor).
Smyrnian | Jan 02, 2013, 08:23 PM EST
Steven - do you think there may be a reason the US is on guard?????
STEVENSTAR | Jan 02, 2013, 07:59 PM EST
YES MOST IMMIGRATED TO THE UK AND AS IM ALWAYS SAYING ITS THE UK NOT THE USA ..... THE UK ISS MORE OF A FRIEND TO IRELAND THEN THE USA .... FOR ANY IRISH MAN EVEN GOING TO HOLIDAY TO AMERICA WILL SEE THE TOUGH INTERROGANTION WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH TO GET THERE... IS HIGHLY INSULTUING ... MIND YOU NOW IN EUROPE AMERICANS NOW ALSO GET INTERROGATED AND QUESTIONED AND ITS EQUALLY DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO COME HERE ... SO THATS ONLY A GOOD THING :-) ..AS THEY SAY WHATS GOOD FOR THE GOOSE IS GOOD FOR THE GANDER ..
WoundedKnee | Jan 02, 2013, 02:52 PM EST
Eiriamach, you just resent me because I have on several occasions defended the Catholic Church against your Know Nothing fundamentalist attacks. You're just a bigot. Isn't there a Klavern meeting tonite that you need to go to?
eiriamach | Jan 02, 2013, 01:37 PM EST
Oh heavens to Betsy again! Trying to stir up bigotry and fear, WoundedKnee says that foreigners and refugees coming to Ireland portends "Doomsday," a nightmare worse than Margaret Thatcher, and the end of Irish nationality and heritage! Instead of Foxy Woxy, the monster named emigration/immigration is about to devour Chicken Little, Goosey Woosey, Henny Penny, and anyone else who's in a panic about the sky falling or Irish nationhood ending.
curtisjohnson | Jan 01, 2013, 08:32 PM EST
@fallstherat " emigrate to UK, the irish still can't wait to get the brit handout" That’s what I was suggesting, that your troll brother swillhamilton emigrate to his beloved terror state and stop squatting on stolen land in Ireland. “brit handout” lol – The reparations owed by the british terror state to the Irish people (as well as a host of other indigenous peoples) are incalculable – let’s just start with the stolen tithes to the state “Church” the Irish people were forced to pay for centuries.
Smyrnian | Jan 01, 2013, 07:41 PM EST
Thanks, Falls Rat!
FallsRNat | Jan 01, 2013, 05:43 PM EST
emigrate to UK, the irish still can't wait to get the brit handout
curtisjohnson | Jan 01, 2013, 01:07 PM EST
emigrate, rather.
curtisjohnson | Jan 01, 2013, 01:05 PM EST
@swillhamilton " Independence has proved conclusively that Ireland is a country that can't run itself." It has proved conclusively that Ireland, a tiny country, with little to no natural resources and a hostile neighbor occupying the northern part of its country, has been a much more stable democracy than other post-colonial states (let’s not forget that the british terror state was on its knees to the IMF in 1975 and is not in great shape in the present). The problem is the poisonous influence of the anglo-sphere through the Dublin establishment and their vision of industrial estate Ireland which to the financial crisis. It was the criminal decision to force the Irish people to bailout of the international creditors of international banks that led to the nation’s current financial condition. Unfortunately, alien squatters such as swillhamilton inexplicably never choose to immigrate despite their antipathy towards the indigenous peoples.
FallsRNat | Jan 01, 2013, 12:10 PM EST
Mrs Thatcher threat to the irish, explain?
Smyrnian | Jan 01, 2013, 10:44 AM EST
WoundedKnee - totally agree with you on this one. Well said. Many people cannot see this, especially back inIreland among the liberal classes and those who have no experience of the world abroad. PS See, we do agree on some things and maybe I am not such a bad fellow after all. :). Happy New Year!
WoundedKnee | Jan 01, 2013, 09:41 AM EST
I will certainly be demanding of any Irish tourism or political spokesperson who tries to sell The Gathering to me that they explain why Irish people are being encouraged to emigrate even while the Irish ruling class imports thousands of foreign workers every month. I urge other Irish Americans who are worried about the survival of Irish nationality to raise this matter whenever the Irish conmen try to sell them some line about The Gathering. In fact the day is fast approaching when anyone using the name Ireland to sell that country will risk breaking truth in advertizing laws. It won't be Ireland, and the people who live there won't be Irish, no more than the people who live in Minneapolis are Lakota Sioux.
WoundedKnee | Jan 01, 2013, 09:36 AM EST
Uninformed readers may have given little credence to my repeated prediction (one shared by many others) that by mid-century the Doomsday for Irish nationality will have been reached. That's when the Irish will have become just one more ethnic group in their ancient homeland. After that there is no going back, no more than the Comanche can today march into Dallas and claim their ancient birthright, the lands their forefathers lived in and loved for countless generations. Anyone analyzing the flow of demographic data out of Ireland must now see it as a cast-iron certainty. The young Irish leave, while young men and women of 100 nationalities stream in. And like all young men and women, they procreate. Irish Americans need to engage with this issue, for it represents a real and present danger to our heritage. It's a far greater threat to the Irish nation than Margaret Thatcher ever was. Irish nationality is in the process of being wiped out from among the nations of the world. And for what?
FallsRNat | Jan 01, 2013, 07:01 AM EST
at the present rate of emigration in both NI & ROI, in 5 yrs, SF may realise their UI & we alone, will mean exactly that, the will of the minority to trump democracy
brian22 | Dec 31, 2012, 07:56 PM EST
There is still room for many more Irish immigrants in Australia; you are most welcome here and there and you will not freeze your bits off!
Portia_O'Neill | Dec 31, 2012, 07:18 PM EST
Actually the United States is absorbing the largest number of immigrants, numbering more than 17,143 versus 16,000 for Britain. Temporary work permits have a way of evolving into more permanent forms of resident status over time.
Smyrnian | Dec 31, 2012, 05:55 PM EST
OLovely - scapegoating is never good. Which 'bankers'? The tellers? Assistant managers, managers, AVP's perhaps? Clerks? Processors? Admins? Is everyone employed by a financial institution guilty by association?
Will Hamilton | Dec 31, 2012, 03:53 PM EST
Oh oh the natives are deserting the sinking ship and the English can't be blamed! Independence has proved conclusively that Ireland is a country that can't run itself. I don't know anyone with a trade or in college who does not intend to leave as soon as they can. The country is drowning in incompetence and political stupidity while managing to have the highest paid politicians in the world. We should vote to be invaded.
blahblah | Dec 31, 2012, 03:02 PM EST
"We don't want them, ye have them but let them home for the Gathering, 2013, we need their money." I'm sure most people can say the same of the foreign Irish immigrants now living on their lands.
olovely | Dec 31, 2012, 02:59 PM EST
Don't let the trolls distract you: it's our homegrown and incompetent politicians and bankers who are to blame for our economic difficulties, not foreign immigrants.
Jack Cass | Dec 31, 2012, 12:23 PM EST
87,000 people immigrated from Ireland in the year to April 2012.That is the equivalent of every man, women and child in South Tipperary leaving Ireland in 1 year. The figure since then has been higher and more to follow. And the Irish Government say their policies have stopped the rise of unemployment.Well if you consider forced immigration a policy, the Irish Government have being very successful. We don't want them, ye have them but let them home for the Gathering, 2013, we need their money.
Smyrnian | Dec 31, 2012, 10:42 AM EST
We are losing them from the top of the pile and replacing them with foreigners from the bottom of the pile.
Mousemess | Dec 31, 2012, 09:46 AM EST
Easpa an Ghaeilge mar is gnach. Speaking of emmigration, looks like the Irish language emmigrated away from the Best of Irish Central. Not that this news service ever even made the feeblest of attempts to post even one article in it.
MichaelMcGrath | Dec 31, 2012, 09:34 AM EST
Yet there is still about 30,000 annual mass immigration into Ireland from the Third Worldand most Africans , for instance, are remaining in Ireland for the Social Welfare.
donal1951 | Dec 31, 2012, 08:56 AM EST
It's appropriate to bring back a song from the historical dustbin. "Another Flight if Earls."
hollabackgurl | Dec 31, 2012, 08:43 AM EST
The Gathering Ireland actually needs is one of psychologists to assess the mental health of its ruling class; and a gathering of economists to teach that class the basics of international finance.