Skip to main content

Goodbye, My Ireland

You can see them every day at Dublin’s International Airport. Couples locked in teary embraces, damp-eyed mums and dads farewelling sons and daughters. Friends promising to stay in touch.

1000 people are leaving each week, heading to the four corners of the world in search of work and a better life. Many, like electrician Alan Niland and chef Sean Sherry are going to Australia.

“Leaving here is a big thing and everyone doesn’t want to go. It’s a last resort really.” ALAN NILAND Irish Electrician

Alan‘s heading to Melbourne and the promise of a job with an Irish electrician. Sean Sherry has been unemployed for the first time in a 25 year career and his fruitless job search has dragged on for 12 months. He now has no choice but to leave his girlfriend and her daughter and take up a job offer on a cruise ship operating from Australia. He has to work to service the mortgage on a house that has crashed in value.

“I was driving home one day and I just had a panic attack. What will I do? (I was) on the motorway. I had to pull in. I was just panicking: ‘what will I do?’ My God, I can’t get a job.” SEAN SHERRY Irish Chef

Sean and Alan are the human faces of a savagely battered economy. Ireland flew fast and high on the back of easy money and a contrived real estate boom. When the GFC hit, highly leveraged economies like Iceland, Greece and Ireland were disasters waiting to happen.

“We went from being a country with a banking system to a banking system with a country stuck onto it because the banks became three times bigger than the gross national product of the country” DAVID McWILLIAMS Economist

As Ireland prepares to go to the polls looking to punish politicians complicit in the economic failure and hoping for a government that can lead them out of the mess, reporter Emma Alberici examines the harrowing human experiences surrounding Ireland’s Generation Exit.

“All our young people are going. It’s not only the immigrants that have come into the country and gone home. It’s all our young people, all our own are going.” RITA NILAND Alan Niland’s mum.


Report by Emma Alberici - ABC.

Popular posts from this blog

Ireland's Celtic Tiger Excesses...

'Bang twins' may never get to run a business again... POST-boom Ireland is awash with cautionary tales of Celtic Tiger excesses, as a rattle around the carcasses of fallen property developers and entrepreneurs will show. Few can compete with the so-called Bang twins for youth, glamour and tasteful extravagance. Simon and Christian Stokes, the 35-year-old identical twins behind Bang Cafe and exclusive private members club, Residence, saw their entire business go bust with debts of €9m, €3m of which is owed to the tax man. The debt may be in the ha'penny place compared with the eye-watering billions owed by some of their former customers. But their fall has been arguably steeper and more damning than some of the country's richest tycoons. Last week, further humiliation was heaped on them with revelations that even as their businesses were going under, the twins spent €146,000 of company money in 18 months on designer shopping sprees, five star holidays and sumptu

I fear a very different kind of property crash

While 80% of people over 40 own their own home just a third of adults under 40 do. This is disastrous for social solidarity and cohesion Changing this system of policymaking requires a government to act in a way that may be uncomfortable for some. Governments have a horizon of no more than five years, and the housing issue requires long-term planning. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was intended to tackle some of these problems. According to its website its remit is to “drive the delivery of better public services, living standards and infrastructure for the people of Ireland by enhancing governance, building capacity and delivering effectively”. So how is the challenge of delivering homes for people in 2024 and beyond going to be met? The extent of the problem is visible in the move by companies, including Ryanair, to buy properties to house staff. Ryanair has, justifiably, defended its right to do so. IPAV has long articulated its views on how to improve supply an

Property Tycoon's Dolce Vita Ends...

Tycoon's dolce vita ends as art seized... THE Dublin city sheriff has seized an art collection and other valuables from the Ailesbury Road home of fallen property developer Bernard McNamara. The collection will be sold to help pay his debts. The sheriff, Brendan Walsh, is believed to have moved against the property developer within the past fortnight, calling to his salubrious Dublin 4 home acting on a court order to seize anything of value from his home to reimburse his creditors. The sheriff is believed to have taken paintings from the family home along with a small number of other items. The development marks a new low for Mr McNamara, once one of Ireland's richest men but who now owes €1.5bn . The property developer and former county councillor from Clare turned the building firm founded by his father Michael into one of the biggest in Ireland. He is the highest-profile former tycoon to date to be targeted by bailiffs, signalling just how far some of Ireland's billionai