The number of Irish workers in Australia has increased, and we all know someone who has left Ireland, but statistics suggest the exodus may have been overstated, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
THE CELTIC TIGER legend may be just a nasty whiff under the shoe of the international media, but an older script is now back in play. “Once again the young Irish prepare to leave,” ran the headline over a two-page spread in last Sunday’s Observer. A huge, poignant photograph of an Irishman in a bowler hat at Ellis Island 100 years ago, captioned “The First Exodus”, was the centrepiece. The article quoted a Boston Globe headline, “The Irish are coming – again”, and backed it up with the assertion that “about 60,000 Irish citizens have moved to Australia, Canada and New Zealand in the past year alone”.
The reporter, presumably, took that figure from Irish political and media commentary. In January, a Sunday broadsheet reported that, “according to the latest figures, 150,000 people have left and are leaving our shores to find work elsewhere”. A few weeks later, Enda Kenny told the Dáil that “60,000 mainly young people” were working in jobs they were over-qualified for in places such as the US, Australia and Canada. In interviews given the day he resigned from the Dáil, George Lee suggested, among other economic calamities, that “60,000 young people under the age of 25” had emigrated in the past year.
The subtext is that these are 60,000 native Irish – humiliatingly over-qualified or desperately under-qualified, depending on the speaker – flooding abroad in a forced exodus. The trouble is that no one seems to know where the figure came from.
CSO figures show that in the year to April 2009, a total of 65,100 people emigrated from Ireland. More than 35,000 of them were non-Irish nationals. Some 18,400 were Irish citizens. Virtually ignored is that fact that 18,400 Irish citizens immigrated to Ireland in the same period. In other words, there was no net emigration of Irish citizens that year. (It’s worth noting that, even at the height of the boom, emigration continued. In 2006, for example, more than 15,000 Irish emigrated, with 19,000 returning.)
Another indicator of movement is the Quarterly National Household Surveys, which bring us to the end of September 2009. After scrutinising the small print, Dr Seamus Caulfield, a board member of the Western Development Commission (WDC) and retired academic, found an increase of 41,000 Irish nationals in the population in the year to September 2009, a figure well above the level of natural growth. Having factored in the usual variables, he concludes there was net immigration of about 15,000 returning Irish nationals.
Where are they? They’re not flocking to the cities. Dublin lost 20,000 people of all nationalities, but the so-called BMW region (Border, midlands and west) gained 5,000. Caulfield suspects that many of them are unemployed Irish workers going home. Of course, in the context of an “economy in flames”, as George Lee described it, last September is a long time ago. Anecdotally, everyone appears to know someone who has left Ireland to look for work, and the next set of figures could give a different picture.
BUT THE 2009 CSO picture is supported by observers on the ground. Roscommon Labour councillor John Kelly, notices no exodus from Ballaghaderreen, a place with more roofers per head than anywhere else in the country, and therefore devastated by the collapse of construction. Kelly, who works locally as a community welfare officer, says he knows of only two husbands who have left the family behind to work in London, but they commute at the weekends. “I don’t know anyone who has gone to America,” he says, “though I know plenty who went to Australia and are back now, with no jobs. But they’re back into football training and we’ll have a full team in Ballaghaderreen this year.”
In Mayo, Fine Gael TD Michael Ring, is seeing no large-scale emigration either. “There’s no big burst for the plane at the moment,” he says, “and that’s because they have no place to go. The door is closed to America. England isn’t much better than ourselves. There’s talk of Canada and Australia. But the GAA teams here are okay for now.”
Dr Katie Sweeney, chief executive of Co Mayo VEC, says this picture is backed up by the “very large waiting lists” for every course in the VEC spectrum – and, crucially, no increase in available places to meet the demand – plus the huge numbers pouring in for advice. “The figures for emigration are hyped and unhelpful,” she says. The truth is that most of those on the live register are going nowhere because their qualifications are not up to standard. The VEC sector needs another 10,000 places and there is still no integrated strategy to link education and training within one Government department.
Dr Sweeney greeted this week’s headlines over a Fás/ESRI forecast, announcing an extra 250,000 jobs to boost the “white collar” force by 2015, with scepticism. The forecast is that the greatest net job gains will be by professionals with at least a primary degree.
The greatest job losses, says the report, will be for agricultural workers, construction workers and operatives, the people currently queuing up for training places in the VECs. Yet the report, says Dr Sweeney, “does not provide a cohesive national integrated strategy to address the challenges in relation to the education, training and up-skilling of adults with low-level skills”. That includes 70,000 people without the equivalent of a Junior Cert and 260,000 below or at Leaving Cert standard.
In Dublin, Joan Burton TD, Labour’s finance spokeswoman, talks of the “huge numbers” who are interested in going back to college, but also of the “construction guys” – the former Breakfast Roll Men – who need a Leaving Cert. “Usually, they would go back and do an access course, but the number of places available is capped, and way below demand. And the system is desperately slow in responding. It raises the question of the interaction between Fás and the VEC sector.”
Meanwhile, as always with the emigration experience, there is only guesswork as to the true situation. The fact that we live in the age of Skype, instant communications and relatively affordable air travel detracts only a little from the heartbreak encapsulated in so many involuntary departures.
In the year to June 30th last year, some 2,384 Irish people settled permanently in Australia, compared to 1,668 the previous year, according to Australian statistics. Last June, there were another 17,130 Irish people there on temporary residency visas, up from 13,389. Liz O’Hagan, an Australian visa specialist, expects that figure to have soared by now.
The sense that tens of thousands of young people are weighing up their options, both here and abroad, is inescapable.
As the pressure builds, O’Hagan is presenting roadshows to packed meeting halls around the country. Almost 300 turned out in Letterkenny, 250 in Waterford and Galway, 180 in Killarney. Her company has recently spoken to or assessed 1,500 people inquiring about Australian residency, and 400 are already going through the process, which can take up to three years.
One of her tasks, she finds, is to educate young people on stringent Australian immigration requirements. General bad behaviour (including bribery of farmers to meet visa requirements), exacerbated by a deep sense of entitlement, has ensured that the Irish working-holiday fraternity is getting a jaundiced welcome from potential Australian employers. Nonetheless, in a survey conducted by O’Hagan’s company with 250 backpackers late last year, she found that nearly half had got jobs within two weeks.
As for permanent residency visas, Australia is no pushover, seeking only highly skilled people – not crane drivers with certificates – who are able to prove that they can immediately start making a long-term contribution.
CANADA WILL ACCEPT crane drivers, but Christopher Willis, a Canadian immigration consultant who now works with O’Hagan, notes that the Irish seem to want to move “in a matter of weeks, as opposed to months or years, which may explain why many are thinking about it as opposed to doing it. It also costs money to emigrate, and people don’t have the same disposable income as they did several years ago”.
As for those who are prepared to sit out the recession at home, it is important to remember that “this is not the 1980s all over again”, says Lisa McAllister, chief executive of WDC. “Then, there was nothing like the level of third-level education, no broadband or distance learning opportunities. Now we are a different country.”
But her frustration at the lack of co-ordination between various departments in the State’s response to rising unemployment is palpable. This is what she calls “the golden hour” for Ireland’s young, the period between the loss of a job and disillusionment and/or emigration. The WDC has already presented its analysis to the Government. “Now the agencies should be moving into solutions. Get on and do it,” she says. “This is an opportunity to get behind growth strategies, rather than hype up the figures on emigration and size of ghost towns.”
The need is to turn jargon into meaningful words. “If I’m a plumber or a carpenter, what does the ‘green economy’ mean to me in terms of a job? They need to know what opportunities are coming up. How do I make them accessible and tangible?”
