Hard Times Come Again Once More

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal portrays a different side to the doom and gloom of government debt and political instability in Ireland. Don Duncan gives an inside scope on the families around Ireland and what they are experiencing in terms of the prospect of emigration.

Duncan examines how the cure for recessions has been emigration and how this is going to affect the general election in Ireland. He explains that thousands have joined in a new wave of emigration, this has been unrivaled in two decades with “65,300 leaving the country in 2010” (Kelly, A. IrishCentral.com). I think tragically, as if history is repeating itself, Ireland is in an economic collapse and is likely to sink even further during the rest of this decade “We just seem to be incapable of governing ourselves” resulting in a 62 year husband and wife (Lynch’s) bound for Australia. The article gives a concise account of the emigration flows of Ireland in the past three decades, however it is stated that this generation are the most educated resulting in brain drain.
It is the case that we the people of Ireland “symbolize Ireland's economic crisis than the re-emergence of large-scale emigration”. History shows that this happened after the famine as well as the1950’s and 1980’s, where in 1989 44,000 people left while currently the CSO predicts that 100,000 people will emigrate over the next two years, more than twice the number that left in 2009 and 2010. That comes to about 1,000 per week. Duncan later quotes John McHale (economist at NUI Galway) and the “fiscal feedback loop” and how tax hikes, cuts in education, health care as well as austerity measures and higher unemployment could increase the incentive to leave. McHale concludes that our skilled workforce and knowledge based economy provide our competitive advantage “If the most enterprising people leave, you undermine that advantage."
In all this talk about the economic welfare of the nation I feel this article show the massive effect emigration has on the mindset of a nation. Brothers, sisters, sons and daughters are leaving their homes. Houses have been left unoccupied after the property boom but now homes are vacant. The reflection of “the Irish countryside been littered with abandoned houses, and parishes struggled to muster full football teams” in the 1950’s, to the tearful reunions at Dublin Airport as smartly-dressed sons and daughters came back home for the Christmas holidays. "I remember thinking—I hope to God my kids don't end up leaving like that. A quarter century later, Mr. Lynch's children are doing just that. How as a nation can we restore confidence when the close Irish society is been torn apart by emigration. Why trust our system when “Our economic miracles are always of such short duration”. "We just can't seem to have a sustainable economy."