The Hunt for Jobs Sends the Irish Abroad, Again [From NYT by Jihwan Kim]

November 20, 2010

The Hunt for Jobs Sends the Irish Abroad, Again

By SUZANNE DALEY

DUBLIN — Antoinette Shields had a plan to keep her tall, blue-eyed son, Kevin, close at hand. When she took over her boss's construction company in 2002, she hoped to retire at 55 and give her son the business.

But it is not working out that way. Mrs. Shields's company, which once employed 26 people, is now down to 8, still afloat in Ireland's collapsed economy, but barely. Though Kevin graduated from college two weeks ago, she has no work for him, and he expects to emigrate to the United States or Canada next year.

"That is where we are," Mrs. Shields said. "Sad, isn't it?"

Just three years ago as Ireland's economy boomed, immigrants poured in so fast that experts said this tiny country of 4.5 million was on its way to reaching population levels not seen since before the great potato famine of the mid-19th century. The conditions that prompted the Irish statesman Éamon de Valera to express the hope that Ireland's children would no longer "like our cattle, be brought up for export" seemed like quaint history.

That has abruptly turned around.

As this country struggles with its newest financial crisis, and the European Union and the International Monetary Fund prepared a bailout package that is likely to run into the tens of billions of dollars, Ireland seems set to watch yet another generation scatter across the globe to escape desperate times. Many are headed to Australia, where a mining boom has produced construction jobs in the western part of the country. But others are going to Canada, New Zealand, the United States, Britain and even the Middle East or Asia.

Mrs. Shields, who lives in Carlingford, a village about 48 miles north of Dublin, said she knew a number of parents whose children were already gone. The parents gather at the local golf club "trying to take strength from each other," she said.

Experts say about 65,000 people left Ireland last year, and some estimate that the number may be more like 120,000 this year. At first, most of those leaving were immigrants returning home to Central Europe. But increasingly, the experts say, it is the Irish themselves who are heading out — unsure that they will ever come home.

"Things totally flipped in a very short time," said Edgar Morgenroth, an economist with the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. "And if you don't want to go, it can be quite painful."

Those left behind say it is hard for them, too. Cónán Ó Broin, 23, who works for the Union of Students in Ireland, said the sendoffs in his hometown, Clondalkin, were now so frequent that everyone knew the drill, assembling at a pub for a final round of drinks.

"We call the parties Irish wakes," said Mr. Ó Broin, whose two best friends left for Australia this year, after nine months without work. "It's pretty bad. It really affects you."

Ireland's economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession. Signs of the downturn are everywhere. Dublin's main shopping area is full of for-rent signs and handwritten posters in store windows advertising special one-day sales. Mr. Morgenroth sits in his office overlooking an almost vacant office complex.

Some of those emigrating are desperate for a paycheck. Others are just disgusted that Ireland should find itself in such a state, and they fear they will be paying for years — with tax increases and pay cuts — for a mess they did not create. Bernard McNerney, 25, who has a job, said he would leave next year to teach English in South Korea and see where life took him after that.

"I don't want to be here with everyone complaining and people in a genuinely bad way," he said.

The latest moves to shore up Ireland's economy follow more than two years of harsh austerity measures by the government. Taxes have been raised and salaries cut for nurses, professors and other public workers by up to 20 percent. This month, the government announced that an additional $6 billion would need to be cut from the budget next year.

Some economist argue that emigration can be a useful safety valve in hard times, reducing the numbers of the unemployed and avoiding the debilitating effects of long-term unemployment.

In fact, the number of Irish signing up for unemployment benefits dropped about 3 percent last month. The government pointed to the change as a sign of an improving economy. But opposition parties quickly disputed that analysis, saying the change was really caused by emigration.

And there are risks, too, that Ireland's best and brightest — the very people who could help turn things around — are leaving.

Edwina Shanahan, the marketing manager of Visafirst, a company that helps emigrants settle abroad, said there might be some truth to this. "A lot of the countries giving visas are quite choosy," she said. "You need to be highly qualified and have recent job experience to get into Australia. They are getting the best among us."

Orla Neary and Joseph Rice decided to move to Australia three months ago, when they realized it could be years before they could afford their own home.

Mr. Rice, 25, is in training to become an electrician, but he would have trouble getting his license here — there are so few jobs that he cannot log the required hours. His brother has won awards as an electrician, and even he cannot find work, Mr. Rice said.

Ms. Neary, 22, just finished her training as a midwife. But because of austerity measures the national health system is unlikely to hire anyone soon. She takes temporary work when she can get it. Some weeks, she will get called to cover for three shifts. But other weeks, none.

"Things here are not going anyplace," Mr. Rice said recently. "This place is just stuck."

Ireland experienced its sharpest population drop during the 19th-century potato famine when the population dropped sharply from 6.5 million. More than a million people emigrated, and another million died. But there have been other waves of emigration during economic downturns in the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1980s.

While most emigrants plan to return someday, most of those early emigrants never did. But people who left in the 1980s did come back in the 1990s, encouraged by the Irish government. Ireland benefited from their experiences abroad. "The drain of the '80s was the gain of the '90s," Mr. Morgenroth said.

The Irish have emigrated so often that almost everyone has relatives in several countries. "Emigrating is a cultural norm, even if it is not a cultural preference," said Brian Lucey, an economics professor at Trinity College in Dublin. "The Irish know how to do it. They build networks and take care of each other."

Kevin Shields has relatives in the United States, even an uncle who was in the Marines, and he has entered the lottery for a green card. With a degree that qualified him to estimate the cost of construction projects, he is also contacting construction companies in Canada. "It is depressing listening to the news here," he said. "There is nowhere as bad as here." But he hopes to be back in Ireland eventually.

Mrs. Shields said she took comfort from the fact that emigration today was not what it used to be. "It's not like when we were waving goodbye from a dock," Mrs. Shields said. "There are lots of ways to stay in touch — Google, Facebook. A lot of mothers around here are learning a lot about computers these days."

"We'll come out of it," she added. "And maybe we will come out of it stronger."