I've long been concerned for the economic future of the generations behind me. This made me sad this morning.
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EUROPE NEWS
JANUARY 21, 2011.
Tough Irish Economy Turns Migration Influx to Exodus
By GUY CHAZAN and AINSLEY THOMSON
DUBLIN—Ireland is facing a wave of emigration on a scale unseen since the 1980s, as young people desperate for work turn their backs on an economy ravaged by debt crises, high unemployment and tough austerity measures.
A new report by the Economic and Social Research Institute, a leading Dublin-based think tank, said 100,000 people are expected to leave Ireland between April 2010 and April 2012. That averages out to roughly 1,000 a week, or more than 2% of the population.
They are being driven away by a lack of jobs. Ireland's unemployment rate stood at 13.5% last year—about double the rate in Germany—and is expected to remain stubbornly high as the country struggles with sluggish growth and a mountain of public and private debt.
The Irish government has been looking to exports to drive a recovery. Exports have grown strongly; but that appears to have had little effect on the jobless rate. "The problem is that the export part of the economy is not employment-intensive," said Alan Barrett, co-author of ESRI's quarterly economic commentary and an expert in migration.
Danny O'Connor, a 21-year-old trainee carpenter from the southwestern town of Cork, is part of the exodus. He is halfway through an apprenticeship, but is already packing his bags for Australia to join a friend who moved there a few months ago and "is loving it."
"There are more opportunities there," he said, while Ireland is likely to be depressed for years to come, with jobs few and far between. "The economy is going to get a lot worse before it gets better," he added.
The new figures mean emigration is likely to be a central issue in Ireland's general-election campaign. On Thursday, Prime Minister Brian Cowen called new elections for March 11.
"The return of mass emigration is the stark legacy of a tired Fianna Fail-led government on the way out of office," said Joan Burton, finance spokeswoman and deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party.
The migration statistics offer confirmation that the era of the Celtic Tiger is over. During the boom years of the past decade, when the Irish economy was the fastest-growing in Europe, many of the Irish diaspora headed home to share in the country's newfound prosperity. Poles, Slovaks and other Eastern Europeans also piled in to seek work in Ireland's thriving construction sector.
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.But hopes of a sustained revival were dashed by last year's banking crisis, which climaxed when Ireland was forced to accept a rescue package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
Ireland has experienced several waves of high emigration in its history, often in response to calamities both natural and man-made. During the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-19th century, which according to some estimates killed a million people, one million more emigrated from Ireland. At the height of the famine, at least 200,000 people a year were leaving, most of them to the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K.
In the 1950s, thousands of laborers and semi-skilled workers left Ireland for the U.K., then in the grip of a road-building boom. In the 1980s, with unemployment running at 15%, public finances in disarray and the economy stagnating, some 200,000 emigrated. "Unlike in the 1950s, many of these were well-educated and highly-skilled," says Dr. Barrett. That wave peaked in 1989, when 44,000 left Ireland, according to ESRI.
Emigration began to tick up again in the postboom period, with 35,000 leaving from April 2009 to April 2010. ESRI said 60% of these were non-nationals—migrants returning home—and 40% indigenous Irish.
The main destination for those leaving Ireland in 2010 was the U.K., which absorbed some 14,000 Irish immigrants. The next most-popular destinations were the newer EU member states, including Poland and the Czech Republic. EU members France and Germany came in third. Some 23,000 went to other countries, including Australia and New Zealand, and a modest 2,800 moved to the U.S., according to figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office.
Write to Guy Chazan at guy.chazan@wsj.com and Ainsley Thomson at ainsley.thomson@dowjones.com
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