No quitten we're whelan on to chitchat 11

In 1841 four years before the Great Famine in my parish in Wexford the population was 5344 people. It reduced every year after to 1966 to it's lowest level of 1155. In the last Census of 2022 it reached 1529. It took 56 years to increase the parish by 374 since 1966.

I get all arguments. Be they religion, skin colour change, culture, free reign on seemingly open borders, migrants disposing of documentation, welfare grabbers.

I had an English man out today with an Irish apprentice or co-worker. He was sent out to go at a hydraulic fitting on a loader. What he didn't know was it required splitting the boom on the loader. He never did it before and my job was his learning. The whole day and fills of oil. With no damage done to the loader but at the end of the day he hadn't the confidence to put it back together with the shims and afraid of any mess ups. It cost 680 euro for the two labour and pipework. And tomorrow another crew may go at putting it together again.

What we badly need is manual labourers and skilled people in this country. We need the courses and technical colleges to teach the trades and we need the people to stay in the country after for a certain length of time. Be it 5 or 10 years. We need the competition in trades.

I couldn't care less what skin colour any worker is. As long as they know what they are doing and don't charge an arm and a leg for a non completed job. For a society to work it needs workers. The Romans knew this even if they used slave labour from the conquered provinces. Today we outsource labour and goods to outside the eu to capitalise on their lower conditions. But if we want things fixed inside the EU and built then we need workers. We should not kid ourselves that welfare and dole is the or an answer. It's a safety net. But some see it and the conditions provided as a goal.

It's complicated and multi faceted but life and society is anyway.

Didn't get the full breakdown.

Paid by card in the card machine and the invoice is following in the following days by email.

He did list it out. But I can't exactly recall again at this moment. The final figure sticks though.

1 drum of oil. 4 lengths of hydraulic pipe and fittings and blockers maybe 12 ft long.

I'm not cribbing. Well maybe. Bit annoyed over people in general and machinery.

Farming in Ireland is not cheap.

Had a leak on scrapers on a Sunday morning around Christmas. Rang milking machine man. He put in new pipe and a drum of oil and labour. €180. Tbh I'd have paid twice that. Job done right

The hydraulic pipe that burst would have been 3 - 4ft long. I had access to one end myself. But due to the design of the machine the other end was just beyond arms reach. If I could have taken it off myself. A hydraulic outfitters was 5 minutes away by car. 10 minutes say to get a new one made with the fittings crimped on. Probably would have been 40 euro?. And five minutes back and another five minutes to fit if it was accessible.

If a tool could be fashioned to reach inside from the open end to open the fitting and tighten it again it'd be five minutes.

It was cruelty today. From forklifts and tractors pulling on the boom to then now needing someone else to put it back. And discovering parts welded where they shouldn't have been welded and bolts not knowing where they came from. 🙄

Not easy.

Go into any leaving cert class, how many wan to be a mechanic, can't blame them there was no regard for geniuses a few years ago. One man local as a collage student he'd work weekend and evening, got a job with a fairly big contractor,could fix any machine.

Turns out he couldn't get a mortgage to do up an old cottage he inherited.

I can only speak of my own area but was a huge exodus from here about 15 years ago, I'd say about 80% have now returned after maybe 2 to 4 years and now settled here, most have houses built.

I can only speak for here locally haven't a clue what's happening elsewhere.

Not really. Half if last year's Mary I graduates have emigrated but there's a shortage of teachers in the country. However it's very hard to get a job in rural Ireland and a teacher's salary won't go far towards a mortgage esp in Dublin where the acute shortage is.

Similar story with the medical professions and many others along with the fact that the HSE is an ongoing shiteshow to work in.

Got answer is not to deal with the problem but to import workers from weaker economies.

There's some loss of energetic 25 to 35 year olds in the country.

Lads, I get it, the lack of experienced trades, the lack of someone who wants a days honest work for a days pay...

It's annoying.

But, importing tens of thousands of passport burners and dole scammers, Josef Puskas and his non-working family of 22 members isn't the answer.

That just impoverishes us.

It's not even a case of "we can't save the whole world" anymore, it's a case of "we are too blind to see" that the workers of the world (including our own highly educated ones) are going elsewhere and that we are being rode sideways by every workshy scammer from Moscow to the Cape of Good Hope.

That's what's happening and the sooner the people who pay for it all recognize it, the sooner it can be stopped. The taxpayer funded NGOs and the Polyanna apologists are never going to change their position, - they're financially invested in this.

We're like frogs getting boiled slowly whilst clapping for it...

Around here any young person doing building/shuttering got badly burned in the 2008 crash. They immigrated to Canada, US, Oz etc never to return. When building work returned it was full labor not apprentices that was hired. In my opinion as a society we made this problem by not thinking of the future.

Absolutely agree.

thing is this seems indicative of any developing country, look to any developed country and you see the same attitude to “lower” jobs.

just uniquely, Irish people don’t want to do these jobs, but don’t want “foreigners to come here and take our jobs”. 🤷🏻

No I didn't say it was a lifestyle choice, whatever that means.

Teachers and nurses could afford to live here and establish families in the 80s and 90s, they can't now.

It's a loss to our communities driven by government policy.

💯 this problem is 15 years in the making

Youngest lad here is thinking of doing an apprenticeship. Possibly as an electrician. Thankfully the secondary school he's at isnt pushing the high grades and you must go to college route .