"With the falling birth rate, Ireland may become a nation of immigrants" - thus Piaras MacEinri of UCC on The Scattering, the conference on Ireland and the diaspora which runs at the college for four days from next Wednesday. "We don't really know who we are," says Mac Einri but the conference will try and find out. It will also assess the recent impact of immigration and will be opened by someone with a foot in both camps, US ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith. Speakers are coming from all over the world and will include Rabbi Julia Neuberger, chancellor of the University of Ulster. MacEinri says that in the past, female emigration exceeded male emigration except during wars when men left to join the British forces or to take advantage of the labour shortage at a time when there were restrictions on women leaving.
Nowadays while there are at least 30 Irish pubs in Paris, compared to one at the beginning of the 1980s, in certain parts of rural Ireland 10 per cent of the population may consist of British and continental European immigrants. Yet between 1981 and 1991, more than a quarter of a million Irish returned to Ireland. Interesting stuff.