Irish teaching grads
"struggle to keep the heating one"
as UK entices.

UK recruiters are reportedly stepping up efforts to head-hunt out of work Irish teachers, as jobs continue to run thin on the ground at home.

The teachers - many of whom have been unemployed for months - have been enticed by equal or more lucrative pay packets than what they would receive in Ireland.

Hourglass Recruitment was one of the headline recruiters at the much anticipated Jobs Expo held last weekend, reportedly offering as many as 1,000 teaching posts to eager job-seekers.

The recruitment agency's director told the Irish Independent that the group still planned to recruit as many as 100 Irish teachers in each of the major scientific school subjects: biology, physics, and chemistry.

The director said that many of the Irish his firm had convinced to make the hop across the Irish Sea would rather have stayed at home, but were unable to find gainful employment "for neither love nor money."

The agency heavily recruits from Ireland, among other anglophone countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

However the ongoing recession and joblessness of many Irish teaching graduates makes it especially fertile ground for recruiting the disillusioned, despairing, and depressed alumini of Ireland's teaching colleges.

"As each year goes by, these people [the teachers] become more deskilled and lacking in confidence," he said.

One Cork-based former primary school teacher, who identified herself only as Marie, explained the difficulties that many of her colleagues are encountering in finding employment.

"It's quite common for recent H.Dips [an Irish teaching qualification] to land temporary contracts, or even take positions as teaching assistants, but making the next step into finding a permanent job that pays enough to keep the heating on seems to be an impossible challenge," she said.

"At least four of my friends have already emigrated to various parts of the UK: Manchester, Birmingham, London, and even Glasgow."

"It's not something any of us would have planned to do, but it's better than drawing the dole, or scrounging off our parents."

Ireland's emigration dilemma has risen sharply since the worst of the economic turmoil took hold.

Last year's figures from the Central Statistics Office, the latest data available, showed that almost 90,000 had left Ireland's shores - many of them young people forced to emigrate for lack of work.