Sir, – Una Mullally ("No country for young men and women – why young people leave Ireland", Opinion & Analysis, September 21st) provides an analysis of "why young people leave Ireland" before announcing a call to arms for young people to stand as Independent candidates in the next general election.
My issue is not with the incorrect assertion that “political parties are irrelevant” and “their popularity is minimal”, despite opinion polls repeatedly putting support for the main parties at over 70 per cent, and the balance of below 30 per cent being divvied up among around seven or eight smaller parties, as well as Independents. Nor is my issue with the maths in the early paragraphs (a fall from 180,900 to 104,600 does not represent a drop of 34 per cent in anyone’s Ireland).
My issue is with the glaring and continuous omission of the enormous contribution being made to Ireland and Irishness by the thousands of young Irish people who live and work abroad. For many, myself included, leaving our shores was a choice freely taken, and did not happen because anyone told them to or because they felt they had to.
What’s more, living abroad in different places has not meant that I have not maintained strong and important links with what will always be my home, and indeed like many thousands of Irish abroad, I fully intend to return to Ireland one day, when I’m ready to do so.
Some people left, and they wish it were different, and it is indeed for them and their families and communities a tragedy. However, the reasons for emigration are indeed, as Una Mullally correctly points out, more abstract than just getting a job, and many young people leave employment in Ireland before making the choice to move. Social and physical mobility, life experience and new and different perspectives are examples of what can be gained by being Irish but happening to not live in Ireland, for a time at least.
Furthermore, the author’s argument is premised on the now jaded and outmoded notion of what a “nation” is. The relatively short period of world history of the “nation state” in the way the author construes it, with strict borders, and homogeneous and clear-cut divisions and groupings of people, is under pressure everywhere, and indeed is a relatively new phenomenon for countries such as Ireland anyway. Being Irish in Britain, in Belgium or in Bahrain doesn’t stop you being Irish, and doesn’t sever the links with home. Indeed the enormous growth of GAA and Irish clubs abroad, the phenomenal global successes of initiatives such as the web summit, and the ingenuity, passion and creativity of the Irish and Irish communities abroad can even strengthen links with home, and can also add an enormously valuable and acknowledged dimension of culture and richness to places and communities around the world.
Huge numbers of ambitious, hard-working and independent young Irish people are making a go of it abroad. To constantly lament their loss, and the changes this has caused to Ireland and Irishness, is to do them a great disservice, and it fails to acknowledge the contribution they make to our country and to our culture each and every day.– Yours, etc,
BARRY COLFER,
Department of Politics
and International Studies,
University of Cambridge.
Sir, – Una Mullally puts “the number of twentysomethings who have left” Ireland since 2009 at 210,000.
According to CSO figures, net migration between April 2009 and April 2015, for all age groups, was 169,100. I suspect that Una Mullally is counting “twentysomethings” on the way out, but not on the way back in.
Furthermore, she states that “there are 205,150 fewer twentysomethings in Ireland that there were six years ago” and then in the following paragraph implicitly attributes this drop to young people leaving. This ignores demographic factors. In 1980 Ireland’s birthrate was 74,000, then “from 1980 to 1994 the number of births fell steeply to reach a low of 48,000 in 1994” (CSO, April 2013).
It’s hard to leave when you haven’t been born. – Yours, etc,
CIARÁN DELARGY,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.