“I know we are the country’s future but at the same time why should we stay and pay for someone else’s mess?”
I find this quote, discussed in one of our Friday posts, fascinating and troubling on a number of levels. It is by a 26 year old graduate on a short term contract. His girlfriend left for a job in London on Saturday, where she is joining former college class mates. He’s almost certainly going to follow. This is the generation that only knew the Celtic Tiger. A generation that as a state we have invested in heavily through the education system. A generation that should have been the next wave of Ireland’s economic miracle. At present, they are the generation that is increasingly disillusioned with the situation they and the country are in and they are leaving. And with them goes a large slice of our potential future.
A story published last Thursday in The Kingdom newspaper gives some idea of the scale of younger emigration and its local effects on communities. They report that 197 GAA players transferred their club registration out of County Kerry in the first seven months of the year, the vast majority heading to the UK, US and Australia. At least the same number again have left without re-registering for clubs at their destination. And with them goes not only their sporting skills. Scale that up outside of the county and one organisation and the effect becomes clear.
The next budget and the four year plan are partly predicated on emigration (40,000 in 2011, 100,000 over the next 4 years). Instead of trying to retain of best and brightest, our policy is to hope they leave! And they go disillusioned and resentful, feeling that they are not only paying the price for other people’s mistakes but if they stayed that they are expected to carry the burden of debt and woes into the future; hardly the best sentiments for encouraging later return.
There are many, many priorities for action at the minute, but near to the top should be job creation for young graduates such as intern schemes and targeted programmes to incentivize and mentor start-ups (the Union of Students in Ireland have made good suggestions). Encouraging emigration, on the one hand, and failing to implement a job’s strategy to retain graduates, on the other, does not constitute a policy to build a smart economy. In fact, there is very little smart about it. It is just plain dumb.
Rob Kitchin
Ireland after NAMA 
November 15, 2010 at 11:04 am
moralizing is not inappropriate, but you have like all the others bar a few, not unbderstood that this is the normal policy for Ireland.
The increase in population was abnormal. Instead of setting out the strategy of keeping people at “home”, we imported migrants from everywhere. We set to selling one another houses at ever increasing prices and to develop every acre of land into housing or prisons! We threw it away and those who objected were told to fuck off or to die!
By the great and the good!
If I ever return, some may regret it.
November 15, 2010 at 11:31 am
I graduated in 2004, and left for London in 2006. I didn’t leave because there were no prospects in Ireland, I left because the place is incapable of change, at least at any recognisable pace, and the governance is not of a high standard. England is not perfect by any means, but comparing the two countries it is difficult to see reasons (other than family) to return. Jobs are only part of the equation.
November 15, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Rob,
Emigration being planned and thus encouraged is nothing new.
It was the same during the 1980s crisis with TDs commenting that it was necessary.
IMO, it is how the insiders protect their positions by refusing to make the kind of changes needed to encourage a growing population and all that implies in terms of creating new wealth and sharing resources.
Failure to implement the 1970s Kenny report on the control of the price of building land is one example.
The non-implementation of the public sector reforms under benchmarking and ditto for the Croke Park agreement (delay is the deadliest form of denial) is more of the same.
I have always felt that the issue of class sizes in primary schools is an example of the manifestation of insider power. It seems to me that teachers unions insist on higher pay first and better learning conditions (which includes better working conditions for teachers) lag behind.
Mancur Olsen referred to the issue of insider power in some of his work.
More recently so too did Simon Johnson, a former IMF chief economist in his 2009 article The Quiet Coup http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/
November 15, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Given the choice, young people will always migrate to those places where they believe they have the best opportunity to succeed and fulfil their dreams. For years that was America. But now with the socialist takeover of our country, ambition has been replaced by social conformity i.e. mediocrity, and substantially increased government intrusion into our lives. Those “in charge” like that, as they perceive that the populace will be easier for them to control. Meanwhile as they proceed toward that perverted utopia, they keep redistributing wealth and keep the debt machine going. The problem with the young Irish segment leaving is that they will find no haven outside IRL. Ireland actually has a great opportunity to become a beacon of entrepeneurial opportunity. But alas, even the most conservative in the country appear to be no more than a slight morph to the right of radical socialism. The young generation, unfortunately, will have to experience a period of hardship before they come to appreciate the benefits of personal freedom and self determination. The country will be the worse for it in the short term, but perhaps a new, more enlightened generation will emerge as a result. As President Reagan properly observed: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem.”
November 17, 2010 at 10:40 pm
I would imagine that the emergence of crypto-fascism and downright lunacy in the US might be a bit of a barrier to many people wanting to go and live there. Things were looking slightly positive there for a while, but it seems the land created by Reagan has begun to reassert itself again.
November 18, 2010 at 12:50 am
PG
November 15, 2010 at 9:58 pm
[…] Ireland has produced a lot of talk about emigration. For example, these two recent posts, here and here, from the ‘ireland after nama’ blog and further posts, here, at the ‘Irish […]
November 16, 2010 at 12:02 pm
The irony remains that at least Irish people have the opportunity to go abroad to find an even better life..spare a thought for the 3 billion plus of our fellow souls on this planet who live on less than $2.50 per day, suffer disease, starvation and early death. The least of their worries is pension cuts, reducing social welfare, cust in class sizes and less special needs teachers.
November 16, 2010 at 3:04 pm
[…] the recovery. That will come from domestic sectors.- Rob Kitchen at After Nama on the idiocy of running an economy where mass emigration is a key element of survival:The next budget and the four year plan are partly predicated on emigration (40,000 in 2011, […]
November 18, 2010 at 3:48 pm
[…] be successful, they now need at least 40,000 to leave the country. Previous posts to this blog by Rob Kitchin and Cian O’Callaghan point out that it is the young, highly educated cohort that are most likely […]
November 24, 2010 at 12:38 pm
[…] workforce, financial and structural support for start-ups to create jobs ….etc (as discussed in this post for example). If their respective economic bases do not solidify in the next few years, all four […]