Returning emigrants, lured back by the booming economy here, are finding that, increasingly, they do not feel at home in their own homeland. Like Oisin returning from the delights of Tir na nOg only to discover that 300 years have passed in his absence, many returned emigrants have found that the country of their birth has become unrecognisable, and that the people have become alien in their attitudes.

According to CSO figures, an estimated 115,800 Irish emigrants have returned home since 1993. Just as Ireland has been transformed economically, so many of these emigrants have been transformed by their experiences abroad. Their home-coming may bring a disappointing sense of disconnection and disorientation.

"When you travel, your experiences are so different to those of the family and friends you left behind. For me, coming back was like coming back to another culture," says Bridget Collins, a former nurse who owns and runs a successful guesthouse in Dublin. "Within my own family, I would feel a little isolated because my experiences have been different. I left when I was quite young and my exposure in my life is different to theirs. They have not been away from the small area where they grew up," she says. "You come back thinking that things will be like they were when you left and they are not", says John, a professional in his 40s who returned to the Republic 15 months ago. "You learn that returning to Ireland is not going to be like coming home. It's going to be like re-emigrating all over again. You have to go through the pain of rejection, the feeling that `Ireland, my own country, doesn't want me' and `I don't belong'."

John, who left Donegal as a child in the 1960s when his parents emigrated to the UK for work, has "always wanted to come home". But he wasn't prepared for the GAA-centred, parishpump thinking that is prevalent here.

"You have been away and seen how things are done differently. If you try to influence the ways things are done through your new ideas, you meet with what I call `culchie thinking', a begrudging attitude to new ideas that is very prevalent," he says.

At times John has even doubted whether those who were not forced to emigrate, are willing to accept those who were. "There's an anti-immigrant attitude here," he asserts. "But Ireland still has its charm and I wouldn't live anywhere else."

John and Bridget are two of about 25 returned emigrants - nurses, doctors and other professionals both single and married - who responded to an advertisement for the newly-formed Returned Emigrants Network. At the first meeting, those attending were relieved to discover that it is not unusual to feel dislocated.

"I thought I was the only one," says David, a returned emigrant in his 30s who spent the past 25 years in the US. "The meeting generated some good laughs and interesting exchanges," says the network's founder, Donal O'Leary, a Kerryman who returned to the Republic three months ago, having spent 13 years in Boston as a manager in a large corporation. "I was wondering if there was a need for some means by which returned emigrants could connect and share experiences," he says. "Going abroad has its pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it gives you objectivity and detachment. On the other hand, you feel a certain uprootedness and a sense of lack of belonging.

"I came back to Ireland because of the people and I am staying for the same reason. A sense of mystery, awe, wonderment and a spiritual dimension to human existence still lives here. It is more human and charming, and therefore more interesting.

"Coming back is as much an adventure as emigrating, though quite different in nature. Going abroad there are practical challenges, such as job, accommodation, figuring out how the post office works. Coming home, the challenge is more internal," he says.

After the initial euphoria of being home wears off, returned emigrants suffer "culture shock" and begin to feel disoriented, according to Eugenie Houston (33), author of Working and Living in Ireland. A returned emigrant who spent five years in London as human resources manager in Morgan Stanley, she has worked with 600 people during the relocating process. "People acclimatise to where they have emigrated to and they are not the same people coming back," says Houston. "If you have been away longer than five years, expect a difficult readjustment", she advises. "It will take six months to feel oriented and at least a year to feel comfortably at home, although some people never readjust."

She warns that psychological readjustment to being back in Ireland can be as painful as settling into a foreign culture. "It is not uncommon for people to simply deny to themselves that anything unsettling is happening to them. This manifests itself by postponing what you think you should be doing - such as looking for a job - and days seem to get swallowed up in routine tasks that seem to take ages. It is not unusual for this to be followed by anxiety, frustration and loneliness caused by feeling different to and alienated from the environment around you. This gradually passes as you let go of your past experience and begin to adapt to your new environment," she advises.

Irish society seems to be rather belligerent towards its returned sons and daughters. "The attitude seems to be `glad to have you back, now it's your job to fit in with us, we are not going to change for you'. This may be hard to accept, but it is the same thing you would experience if you went to live in Paris or New York," she says.

Feeling alienated in a place that should feel like home, at first surprised Maire Connolly (32), a nurse who returned to the Republic 12 weeks ago after 10 years in England, the US, Egypt and Australia. During the first several weeks at home, Maire busied herself getting a job and buying a house and didn't get much chance to think about adapting. "I can envisage now that things have settled down that people have changed. I didn't keep in touch with all my old friends. You've seen a lot of life, which other people back in Ireland cannot relate to, so these relationships grow apart. My best friends are all abroad in cities around the world and we keep up by telephone. I am hoping to make new friends, but you have to accept that friendship takes time," she says.

Maire thinks that returned emigrants need to accept that they chose to put themselves through this alienation by leaving Ireland in the first place. "Coming back to Ireland can be frustrating because you have seen different ways of doing things. But we can't change Ireland and tell people in one area that this is how the rest of the world does it. You have to adapt to being back in Ireland. When you move to another country you give it a year, but moving back to your home country you expect to slot in. You have left during the growing years, at 18-20 at the start of your independence, you have made all your mistakes abroad, and you have changed and everyone else has changed. You have to learn to accept that there is a part of your life that will always remain apart," she says.

The message to disoriented returned emigrants would seem to be, persist and it may get better with time. "I'm happy here now," says John. "At the end of the day you have to say `it was my choice to come back, this is my country, by God I'll fit in'. I'm determined it's going to work."

The Returned Emigrants Net- work may be contacted at 087-2845864

The third edition of Working and Living in Ireland by Eugenie Houston will be published by Working and Living Publications in October (£12.95).