Playing the Irish card was once a winner for emigrants, but a lot of sentimentality for the old sod has been eroded, writes ORNA MULCAHY
MEMBERS OF the diaspora, listen up! Your country needs you. It’s payback time once again. Yes, I know. We’re always looking for a dig-out from the 70 million of you out there. You’ve come up trumps before. Sending home money for the best part of 150 years, right up to the 1990s when we got back on our feet. Then, when Ireland began to take off, there you were all over again, helping to generate foreign investment into Ireland, and channelling millions through the Ireland Fund towards worthy projects rather than anything that might have a whiff of the IRA about it. Really, you’ve been great.
Then again, you’ve had it easy for the last decade or so. You’ve been left to your own devices abroad, with only the occasional visit from a family member passing through on holiday (one of their five holidays a year, you thought). That was fine. You got to catch up, and marvel at their prosperity. Maybe took them out on the town, or dropped them off at the airport, if they weren’t getting a cab all the way. Perish the thought of the bus. A good limo service was more like it. You could rest easy. They were just passing through.
They repaid you in spades when you came home for a visit, but was this really Home? The confidence and swagger of the place bowled you over. The price of everything was insane. Your old friends had turned into people with full sets of champagne flutes and six-figure mortgages.
Then, bang! It was all over. First the global financial crisis – and then it turned out that Ireland had a bunch of problems of its own. They’re saying now that it’s as bad as the 1980s, when you emigrated yourself to a place with lousy Guinness where they couldn’t even pronounce your name.
This late Noughties downturn was tough. You kept in touch, catching the headlines online or tuning into RTÉ. It seemed to you that Ireland had it coming. From a distance, you could see the property bubble as far back as 2005. You warned the relatives, but did they listen to you? No they did not.
Apologies. You were right.
But listen, we really do need your help. Forget the bed for the night or the tickets for the Super Bowl. Can you take our first born? Put him up until he finds a job? Better still, can you find him a job? At the very least, have him over for Sunday lunch, introduce him around, check he’s not being fleeced by his landlord, go guarantor on a loan, write him a reference and generally show him the ropes? You remember what it was like. We’d be so grateful. And while you’re at it, could you go halvers on the nursing home fees for Mother?
I could go on and on with the story, but you get my drift. Emigration is back, and once again the Irish abroad are being touched for advice, and for jobs and money. This week I’ve been e-mailing friends in New York and Sydney to tell them about two young people I know who are heading in their direction. Could they look out for them? These are good kids, with confidence and good degrees and money to keep themselves going for a while. They should get on fine out there, but both sets of parents are devastated. They can hardly believe that we are back in the bad old days again with the young being some of our best exports.
The best advice one can give them is the advice of old. “Send so-and-so your CV. They’re very high up. Originally from Castleisland, did you know that? They might be able to help . . . etc etc.” These days it’s called networking. There are Irish men and women in high places, right around the world. Google will find them. It’s a matter of trawling for names in the area you want to work in, and then practising that unique Irish body move of chancing your arm.
Playing the Irish card was a winner once. Back in the 1980s, we had a great reputation of being the cheery underdogs, clever and well educated with it. We were the feisty, fighting Irish with spirit and a great sense of fun (to make up for our freckles and terrible haircuts). People liked to help us out. The 800 years of oppression didn’t go amiss either. The Americans batted for us and gave us visas, the Australians took us in by the thousand, and right next door, Britain absorbed many thousands more.
Now our children are economic emigrants of an entirely different hue. Ireland has been seen to be spendthrift and foolish, a country that had money and blew it, and is borrowing around the world to stay afloat. Furthermore, a lot of sentimentality for the old sod was eroded during our good times, when those who had prospered abroad found they could barely afford to visit, never mind retire here, because it had become so expensive.
We must win back their regard if our children are to have any chance of playing the Irish card abroad.