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Emigration to Australia is at its highest level for a decade. We need to ask why

Those being pummelled by the cost of rent are living through a form of austerity, their take-home wages and disposable incomes decimated

The number of Irish citizens leaving the State between April 2023 and April 2024 was 34,700. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The number of Irish citizens leaving the State between April 2023 and April 2024 was 34,700. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Christmas comes around quickly. It has its own form of repetition; the rituals, gatherings, meet-ups, traditions. One is the annual flurry of video clips of emigrants returning home. I’m a sucker for these tender arrivals-hall scenes. Behind them is the story of a legacy of emigration embedded in our national psyche. But its previous triggers – economic and social – have less purchase now. Yet no matter how much Ireland progresses as a society, emigration remains.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), between April 2023 and April 2024, about 69,900 people emigrated from Ireland, up 5,000 from the same period between 2022 and 2023. This is the highest level of emigration since 2015. It is high, in part, due to Ukrainian people leaving Ireland (21,500), along with 10,600 EU citizens and 3,000 UK citizens. The number of Irish citizens leaving stood at 34,700. Of those, 10,600 left for Australia. This is an increase of 126 per cent on the previous period’s figure, which was 4,700. This marks the highest level of emigration to Australia since 2013.

Not all emigration is the result of hardship, and it would be silly to frame it all as such. Young Irish people are under no obligation to stay in Ireland. Countless places around the world offer a much better quality of life: better nightlife, more amenities, more diverse cultural choices, higher wages, and crucially, housing. And Australia has its own housing issues, especially in Sydney, where the median weekly rent is more than €450.

But there is much greater value in the private rental market in Australia, as well as higher wages. A two-bedroom apartment in Coogee can be rented for the same price as a “studio” flat on Dorset Street. A functioning rental market is not just about the cost, it’s also about the opportunity to rent at all, and it’s about value.

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A useful research project would be to survey emigrants in detail on their reasons for leaving Ireland. Then, we would be able to understand how prominent housing – especially the cost of rent – is as a factor. Certainly, among my own friends, departures in recent years have been catalysed by the rental crisis.

The reality remains that there is no choice in the Irish “market” when it comes to renting. What’s available is overpriced. Supply in and of itself is not the answer. Affordable supply is. It’s pretty obvious that build-to-rent apartments now make up a large part of the private rental market, and do not have enough people on high wages to fill them. Last month, Killian Woods of the Business Post reported that landlords linked to US funds were offering deals on rent coinciding with “Black Friday”. One US residential investor reportedly threw in two weeks of free rent for apartments in Dublin’s docklands as an incentive – hardly a sign they’re in huge demand. How could they be fully occupied? Two-bed apartments are listed for €3,745 a month, which is unaffordable for most people.

During the recent general election campaign, Simon Harris had a soundbite about how he didn’t want his children to live through austerity. But those being pummelled by the cost of rent are already living through a form of austerity, their take-home wages and disposable incomes decimated by rent.

For students, the situation is especially bleak. There is no real affordability in the private student accommodation market. Despite the fact that student homelessness, couch-surfing and extremely draining commutes to college are well-documented, nothing is being done to radically reduce the rent for students. Instead, unaffordability has been designed in to the market through purpose-built student accommodation.

A small single-bed en suite in a “four bedroom cluster”, which includes a “rejuvenating shower” in a new student block in Stoneybatter in Dublin 7, close to TUD’s Grangegorman campus, costs €343 a week, or about €1,372 a month. And that’s fairly standard.

Last July, the president of the Union of Students of Ireland, Chris Clifford, spoke about student accommodation costs being driven up by private developers. “They just want to squeeze as much money as possible from students and know how desperate many students are because of the housing crisis. Yet again, we call on Government to publish the long-awaited Student Accommodation Strategy urgently.”

By August 2023, 68 per cent of young adults aged between 25 and 29 still lived at home, almost 26 per cent higher than the EU average. The situation is particularly bad for young men, with 73.9 per cent of men in that age range still living at home, compared with 61.1 per cent of young women. Across the EU, the average for women in that age range living at home is 36 per cent.

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There’s something deeply wrong, and actually quite upsetting, with the reality that younger generations are growing in confidence, contributing hugely to contemporary Irish culture in so many ways, yet then find that confidence and self-esteem battered by the lived experience of the rental crisis.

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Another Christmas tradition is the collision of family members’ political views over the festive dinner table. Perhaps this year, returning emigrants can ask older generations why the parties responsible for the housing policies that curtail the futures of the young were returned to power in 2024.