Ireland’s lost generation

Ireland has once again become a country of emigrants. Following the collapse of the Irish Tiger economic model, thousands of young Irish are emigrating mainly to English speaking countries like Australia, Britain, Canada and the US. Some are also migrating to Germany where economic prospects remain buoyant. In 2010, 70,000 Irish workers sought a new life abroad.

Thousands of educated young people have left the country- John Cassar White

Emigration is a very emotive subject in Ireland. Between 1841 and 1851 almost 1.5 million Irish out of a population of about eight million immigrated mainly to the US while another 1.4 million died as a result of the great famine caused by the failure of the potato crop. This was not the first time that Ireland was affected by massive disasters caused mainly by the failure of the potato crop on which the economy was so dependant.

The last major emigration flow happened in the 1980s when the Irish economy was undergoing a major painful restructuring changing the balance of employment away from services in the public sector towards productive enterprises in the private sector. An estimated 280,000 people left Ireland in the 1980s.

Many are comparing the current emigration resurgence to that of the 1980s. For the past 30 years Ireland had one of the best educational systems in Europe. When job opportunities in Ireland were insufficient to meet the expectations of bright young well-educated people, they left Ireland and settled in various countries in Europe and in the English speaking countries.

The Irish economic model failed because it was too reliant on the property development sector of the economy. The government was encouraged to spend as tax revenues from property deals flowed in while banks were only too happy to grant loans to developers and private citizens who believed that they could benefit from the apparently endless boom in the property market. But the bubble had to burst; and it did so in 2008 when banks started to see loan default rates growing as people started to lose their jobs as a result of the global economic crisis. The Irish government had to nationalise the major Irish banks to save the economy from crashing. This in turn debilitated the public finances that up to now were the envy of most other European countries.

The new Fine Gael led coalition elected early in 2010 did not promise any magic fix for resolving the unemployment epidemic as about 15 per cent of the Irish workers – mainly young people – remain unemployed. After almost a year since being elected to power, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has admitted that unemployment will remain stubbornly high at least for the next two years. Thousands of educated young people have left the country, while others are actively thinking of doing so even if getting a visa to English speaking countries is becoming difficult also for skilled workers.

Kenny sounded optimistic in his end of year message to the Irish people. He said: “The real impetus has got to be about jobs and the delivery of jobs. I hope that by the end of this government’s period that anybody who’s currently on long-term unemployment will be off long-term unemployment and will either be back in the world of work, or will have involved themselves in upskilling.”

Ireland’s educational system is no longer considered the best in Europe but, despite cuts in educational expenditure as part of the austerity programme to rectify public finances, Irish graduates are still considered among the best in Europe. The Irish government is in fact worried that one of the negative effects of the current economic crisis will be that Ireland will soon suffer a brain drain as thousands of young doctors, nurses, engineers and IT experts leave to seek better job opportunities abroad just as they did in the 1980s.

One of the strategies of the Irish government to strengthen the country’s competitiveness is to improve the educational system to make it once again one of the best in the world. One of the interesting strategies being adopted by the Irish educational authorities is to steer children away from traditional careers of medicine, law and teaching in favour of science and technology.“The real opportunities for Irish graduates will be in technology, science and engineering, and students with an interest in these areas must be encouraged to pursue courses in those fields.”

Ireland’s lost generation is not unique and the strategies being adopted by the Irish government could be copied by other countries to tackle long-term unemployment.

jcassarwhite@yahoo.com