Will Ireland see a waive of mass emmigration?

conorlechance

What do you think? T i was reading a david mcwilliams article on his website and he mentioned this and it kinda put a lump on my throat, then he mentioned how the irish middle class will just be a 'poorer european middle class'

i don't know how bad the situation is in the country? would we be all better off just packing up turning off the lights and moving to germany/uk/france(oh god no:p) etc.

like is recovery possible? is it worth it? i love ireland and all but like is it worth sticking out years of agony for something i have no responsibilty for or my parents have nothing to do with.(weren't greedy in booms, except maby for a few holidays but they don't drink or anything so they have the money saved for it)

Raiser

I think most people feel like there's no ready alternative this time around and if there was they'd certainly consider it.

- I'd love to leave; its getting increasingly depressing to be sitting here in this floundering lifeboat watching Cowen & Co. bailing water into the boat.......

mike65

I reckon you'll see little movement for the rest of this year, but as things start to pick up elsewhere there will be an exodus of qualified 20 and 30 somethings.

Latchy

conorlechance wrote: »

like is recovery possible? is it worth it? i love ireland and all but like is it worth sticking out years of agony for something i have no responsibilty for or my parents have nothing to do with.(weren't greedy in booms, except maby for a few holidays but they don't drink or anything so they have the money saved for it)

Nice for them to and well deserved I'm sure .Best of luck conor .

Rebelheart

conorlechance wrote: »

What do you think? T i was reading a david mcwilliams article on his website and he mentioned this and it kinda put a lump on my throat, then he mentioned how the irish middle class will just be a 'poorer european middle class'

i don't know how bad the situation is in the country? would we be all better off just packing up turning off the lights and moving to germany/uk/france(oh god no:p) etc.

like is recovery possible? is it worth it? i love ireland and all but like is it worth sticking out years of agony for something i have no responsibilty for or my parents have nothing to do with.(weren't greedy in booms, except maby for a few holidays but they don't drink or anything so they have the money saved for it)

Yeah, I'd say as soon as the other countries improve people will leave in large numbers. An unemployment rate of 17% is astonishing.

Anyway, every cloud has a silver lining and I'm looking forward to finally being able to afford that house which cost €500,000 in 2006 and which will cost more like €225,000 - Jim Power said he expects house prices to go down by between 55% and 60% since 2006 (http://www.tribune.ie/article/2009/apr/26/money-talks-gareth-naughton-are-you-a-prisoner-in-/?q=) with even less people in the country to buy the massive surplus of housing. I problably wouldn't even buy it as the material is absolutely crap because Fianna Fáil refused to pass legislation to ensure houses had the proper insulation etc. But I will hopefully be able to build my own home at a reasonable price.

But, yeah, emigration will definitely be back on the agenda with a huge bang in the next year.

the_syco

To where?

The US & Oz will lessen the visas, ensure the locals are employed first, etc. Many other countries will have a large potition of unemployed themselves.

Tom65

A lot of people I know (who are due to graduate or recently graduated) are keeping emigration as an option. Most are keeping up hope for a job, but aren't ruling out emigrating. That's just my experience.

I do think it won't be until the effects of this recession become more long lasting that we'll see anything like "mass" emigration.

JonathanAnon

the_syco wrote: »

To where?

The US & Oz will lessen the visas, ensure the locals are employed first, etc. Many other countries will have a large potition of unemployed themselves.

I agree with this point. In the Eighties there was work in other countries, but it does not seem that there is at the present.

grahamo

As mentioned above more than half the young people in the 1980's must have emigrated but then there was somewhere to emigrate to. Now it seems like all countries are in the sh**!
I hope it doesn't happen again as its really sad seeing all your mates having to leave the country to find work. Things aren't nearly as bad as that though. I grew up in an area of Dublin which had 60% unemployment.

thebman

I'd consider emigrating as soon as things start picking up in other countries.

This country is run by amateurs and the people voting have a crap attitude toward it for the most part electing the same people over and over again with the attitude of sure who else would I vote for. I can't vote for them they were never in charge before they won't do as good a job as they sit at home with no job because of poor economic policy from the people they did vote for.

/rant.

Saabdub

In the 1980s half my graduating class from University had emigrated within a year, a lot of the rest of us stayed on to do postgraduate degrees. Things are going to get a lot worse this time. When the US comes out of recession there will be a demand for Irish graduates and a lot of people will go. If I was out of work this summer and single I'd go on a holiday visa, visit my relatives, take casual work and see the country. My brother has emigrated to Canada and he has managed to get a work visa and is doing quite well, although he has to work very long hours. I'd go myself if I was a bit younger.

I graduated college last year, and a good number of the people I know are either considering moving or already have. Skype and ryanair make it a lot more feasible. A flight from London to Dublin is often cheaper than a train from Dublin to Cork.

conorlechance

do you think we will have the situation that occurs in slovakia and poland where educated people move and perform menial tasks even though the are qualified to do much more?

Saabdub

conorlechance wrote: »

do you think we will have the situation that occurs in slovakia and poland where educated people move and perform menial tasks even though the are qualified to do much more?

I would have thought third level qualifications combined with the ability to speak and write English as a first language will be a great advantage. My brother has no degree but he has non-English speaking migrants working under him in Canada.

b12mearse

I dont think so. Where is everybody going to go? There's no where to go.

Serenity Now!

Saabdub wrote: »

I would have thought third level qualifications combined with the ability to speak and write English as a first language will be a great advantage

Yes, if you have the lingo in a non-English speaking country (as first language) it is a massive help. I've lived in three other countries long term and had to learn the language for two of them.
Living abroad is a great experience. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't before done so.

conorlechance

Hows Sweden doing in this recession? Haven't heard much negativity really, especially to the extent you get in relation to about Ireland, Latvia etc...

declanx

Hmm I saw this unemployment thing starting in late 2006(cutbacks in my industry started in June 2006). The sharp increase in prices for every day things, the expansion in gov spending and my pay packet bought less each month. To me it looked like a pyramid scheme. So I moved to the US (18 months ago) with my wife and kids. My brother in law also moved to the US and my sister in law moved to UK. All college grads.

P.S. I get paid less in the US but I can buy more.

Tom65

conorlechance wrote: »

Hows Sweden doing in this recession? Haven't heard much negativity really, especially to the extent you get in relation to about Ireland, Latvia etc...

Living here, I've heard not a lot. At least, no where near as much as in Irish, British or US news. I keep up with the Irish news and the Swedish news and it's much, much worse in Ireland. They had a big housing bubble burst in the 1990s, were forced to restructure their economy, and came out the other side quite nicely. Funnily enough, that's kept them out of harm's way of the worst of this economic crisis.

(Oh, also, for anyone thinking of emigrating, the government here give free language classes )

conorlechance

hows it like? i presume most cities are not exactly what you would call stereotypically swedish, by that I mean Stockholm Malmo etc. are really multicultural places right?

Is it easy to adapt did you find? I heard in Sweden British culture is fairly big, even more so than American.

the_syco

conorlechance wrote: »

do you think we will have the situation that occurs in slovakia and poland where educated people move and perform menial tasks even though the are qualified to do much more?

Yes. Like the Slovaks, they'll emigrate for the dream, and end up in "any job" to get money. Speaking english may help them, but if there are no jobs there, maybe not.

Daithinski

b12mearse wrote: »

I dont think so. Where is everybody going to go? There's no where to go.

There's no where (worse than Ireland) to go.

Your odds would have to be better in some other country with 10% unemployment, than here, with potentially 17%+ unemployment looming.

realismpol

Sorry.. theres nowhere to go. You can't go anywhere. Theres nowhere to go. Your not going to run away from your troubles this time. This time your going to have to stay and face the music with the rest of us. No more plastic paddies. Do you think those counties albeit with lower unemployent then us want us over there in number. You can just forget about it. I know lots of people who went off to oz and the usa recently and have come back with their tails between their legs. There are no jobs over there either. Its so typically irish to run out when the going gets tough.

The other countries are suffering albeit not as bad as us and are also limiting their immigration. Australia has plans to limits it's so the days of the drunken irish youth wasting their lives out in oz drinking themselves stupid are over. Time to grow up folks and learn to develop ideas and be innovative. Its your own bacon on the line.

Just what were the politicians and the rest of us doing during the boom years. Living it up obviously because its clear there was no plan to stimulate irish jobs, create highly advanced technological companies and jobs run by irish people and owned by irish people. I just look at countries like sweden, denmark norway, switzerland and see how they have similar populations and how they can create companies such as sabb, build their own fighter jets, stealh subs, engage in car manufacturing then i look at us and what did we do told timoney to bascially f off. Too busy engaging in useless tribunals over god knows what for some stupid outcome that nobody really cared about. It was during this time they should have been looking to encourage our businesses, developing plans for long term growth, encouraging and sposoring innovative buisness plans and ideas by native irish people. Instead they were too busy flying around the globe bragging to other countries about our 'suceess'. its amazing to think other countries actually considered ireland a role model and tried to copy our ecomonic model. Some of them glad now no doubt they didn't when they see the economic blackhole we find ourselves in presently.

People were too busy during the boom years buying luxury cars and homes to really sit back and examine did we get rich so quick?. It wasn't through developing our own companies or great strides in technological, agricultural or any other innovative or ideas based growth, thats for sure. It was simply lowering our corporation tax levels and inviting the multinationals in. Thats what stimulated the whole house of straw. Then came the services from that. The service sector built on the service sector.The politicans and so called business leaders told us they were building ireland into a world class knowledge economy. knowledge for what exactly? Oh thats right michael dells new plant in limerick or for programming intels new chips. Thats right we never actally ever run these companies or developed products of our own, we just invited them in and workled for them but who cares we were making money right? A knowledge economy only is an advantage if your the only one with the knowledge. Once the chinese and polish did this too our so called advantage dissappeared along with the michael dells of this world. We were riding a wave of false hope. Id say this began long before this year and in around 2004 - 2008 when the signs were definelty there our knowledge economy and low corporation tax rates could no longer compete with 1 billion chinese working on miniscule wages. Game over for ireland. We had no plan b, the politicians were too busy living the high life during this time and never encouraged business growth. Now they are left with not so much egg but an omlette on their face.

And we have seen how this is such a bad idea to follow when multinationals pull out the amount of other service based jobs increases almost triple fold as a knock on effect. Poor planning or i'd say non existant planning and no forethought from the politicans. Too busy at tribunals discussing how much bertie got from some builder back in 1990 for some job he did...blah blah blah...Irish cronism at its finest.

The real icing on the cake to show how backward for me things are in terms of encouraging native industries was when the 2 guys from limerick who came up with the idea for ebay. They approached the government for sponsorship and were basically told f off by the ida because they were students and couln't come up with 'funds' despite their brillant idea. The guys did get funding and became wealthy in the end, thanks to not an irish company but an american one who took the risk to sponsor them and give them the money to develop and market their product. We had no plan its obvious thats why we are suffering the worst in europe and our strawhouse economic boom is shown for what it really was and is still, dependent on foreign multinationals and the service sector built on more services. We needed to build our own companies, actually develop things ourselves, encourage our youth to develop their own products, companies ideas and sponsor them to success. We have failed miserably in this department and our now paying the price. The politicans are scrambling to find an answer. The answer is obvious...we failed ourselves..

Jonny Blaze

Ah well you know the old saying... when the going gets tough

.. the irish get going!!

And besides if you're going to be poor you may as well do it in a sunny country!

Disease Ridden

Its sad to think that while everybody in the country is either being strangelled with tax or being forced to emigrate to places that offer little hope of employment, Brian Cowen and co. are still extracting the massively, massively inflated salaries that they do. I hate them so much, I really do. Daddy got you your seat, did he Brian? I'd love to see him living on the dole.

realismpol

politicians generally don't give a flying '''' about people, pardon the language, but particularly in this country you only ever see them around election time, when they come with their 10 point made the night before manifesto. Yes promises they have to do things. Then they get elected get their salary, paid driver, their2 days work a week and pension after 2 years and exorbitent salary and to hell with you. Who are you again? Oh yeah johnny normal... go away and work in the factory will you, they have better things to be doing like making laws for you so that they can extract more taxes from you. Funnily enough people in ireland don't seem to care they just elect the same imbeciles again and again no matter what they do because in ireland ' share i had a drink down the local with him hes a grand chap and he's related to me mothers aunt' is more important then discussing the implications of the electing what are degenerates to run a countries economy.

To watch them in the dail is funny if it weren't so sad right now. Arguing like children and the state of some of them. If you picked the freakiest bunch of people from the street you couldn't find a weirder bunch. I swear they are cartoon characters, some of them. We seriously need a whole thinking change of how we run governemnt its role and an examination of how we can change and make it really serve the people instead of serving the elite few.

realismpol

'when the going gets tough.....the irish get going...a do do do a do do a do do a do a do do do a do do...yeah'

Koloman

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

Ah well you know the old saying... when the going gets tough

.. the irish get going!!

And besides if you're going to be poor you may as well do it in a sunny country!

Well if you want a sunny country then off to Spain you go! Oh sorry, it seems they have less jobs then us!

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0424/breaking21.htm

Thirdfox

Many of my college graduate friends are leaving - 17% unemployment is much worse than most other countries. Here in the US, people are lamenting the 8% unemployment...

I want to tough it out in Ireland - but reading the news (I'm currently in the US) I am seriously considering moving... China would be an option :S

Koloman

Thirdfox wrote: »

Many of my college graduate friends are leaving - 17% unemployment is much worse than most other countries. Here in the US, people are lamenting the 8% unemployment...

I want to tough it out in Ireland - but reading the news (I'm currently in the US) I am seriously considering moving... China would be an option :S

We DON'T have 17% unemployment at the moment! It's 11%, just as in the USA it is 8% as of today! Lets get the facts right. It is projected to get up to 17% by the end of 2010. It might not be as bad as that if we get a bit of luck, which we are due. It all depends on the US.

Do you know what the projected unemployment rate is going to be in the USA at the end of 2010?

cabinteelytom

realismpol wrote: »

Too busy engaging in useless tribunals over god knows what for some stupid outcome that nobody really cared about. It was during this time they should have been looking to encourage our businesses, developing plans for long term growth, encouraging and sposoring innovative buisness plans and ideas by native irish people.

Too busy at tribunals discussing how much bertie got from some builder back in 1990 for some job he did...blah blah blah...Irish cronism at its finest.

..we failed ourselves..

Thank you. Great post. I hope it is read. A huge funding effort went into looking at past irrelevant issues... and finding trivia; while real time policies and massive abuses in a dynamic situation, the boom, were unexamined.