Martina Devlin: Time to reshuffle Mary's skills out of harm's way
Thursday February 25 2010
IT didn't take long for those 'hit the road Jack' attitudes to come slithering to the surface. A decade ago we were told the boom had decapitated the dragon heads of emigration.
And already we're back in the realms of Brian Lenihan senior's unforgettable comment: "We can't all live on a small island." So shove off to whichever country is willing to take you in.
Just one generation on from that 1980s notice to quit, another Fianna Fail minister repeats his dismissive sentiments. This time out, they've been put in the spin cycle first to try and wring some of the disdain out of them. But there's no mistaking the familiar shrug of the shoulders.
Mary 'Pontius Pilate' Coughlan insists young people are bailing out in their thousands, not because of zero options at home, but for fun and excitement.
Never has a government washed its hands of its citizens more cavalierly than in the current stance on emigration.
Last year, more people left Ireland than moved here for the first time since 1995, making us once again an exporter of people. The resource we should treasure is the one we discard quickest.
Far from regarding emigration as a national failure, the Government is treating it as a safety valve. Too many jobseekers, not enough jobs. No need to burn the midnight oil unpicking that knot, simply encourage people to apply for visas instead of vacancies.
You and I, we'd call emigration a problem -- and one with a sting in the tail.
Taxpayers are being lost as well as sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. But one man's problem is another man's solution, especially if he favours the short-term approach. After all, a cake can be only sliced so many ways.
In a recent BBC interview, the Tanaiste euphemistically presented these emigrants evacuating Ireland in ever-increasing numbers as young graduates on a gee-whizz adventure. If only that was an accurate picture. She neglected to mention the families where one or both income earners have been made redundant can no longer afford their mortgages and are reluctantly looking overseas for work.
And she discounted the construction workers who have no hope of earning a living here, and face the Hobson's choice of emigration or years on the dole at home. In September 2005, some 12.5pc of the entire labour force worked in construction -- one-in-four males.
Many of them will have to ship out, if they haven't already packed their bags, and some will be obliged to leave wives and children behind.
A cycle of decline is already taking shape: emigration equals fewer consumers equal businesses going bust equal more people forced to emigrate.
Meanwhile, jobs will always be found in Ireland for the 'right' sort of people: those with family connections, or who can tap into the old boy network. No wonder some emigrants take consolation in the hopes of leaving nepotism and cronyism behind on the auld sod.
As for Coughlan, a beneficiary of nepotism and no advertisement for it -- her capacity to spout offensive gibberish is unending. It's a mystery how anyone with such a limited grasp of the English language manages to be so insulting. Yet somehow she manages it.
Point a microphone at the Tanaiste and an interesting time follows. What emerges from her mouth looks like English and sounds like English, but it's not English. It's Muddlish: incoherent, rambling waffle.
A distinction has to be made between people who emigrate from choice, and those who emigrate from lack of choice. Between those who go in search of opportunity, especially if they are young and without ties, and those who go because they are cornered and see no future here. The Tanaiste recognises no such distinction.
My father had to work away from home when I was a baby, while my mother looked after the family. There was no option if food was to reach the table. Thankfully, it was temporary, because his absence created a hole and the pressures were enormous. But how many other families will face that Hobson's choice this year?
Yes, emigration has positive characteristics for some people in certain circumstances: international experience is useful, new perspectives and talents can be gained. But emigration is quite another can of worms for a 40-year-old with children, and it's wrong to overlook that.
We are a nation specialising in melancholy songs, and the saddest among them are on the theme of emigration. From 'Spancil Hill' to 'Many Young Men of 20' to 'Noreen Bawn', with its lament against "the curse of emigration" -- we wrote the songbook. It's all very well telling us how those big airplanes go both ways, and emails and Skype have shrunk the world's boundaries. But involuntary emigration is a bitter pill.
As for those graduates Coughlan waves off so blithely, her attitude towards them is as profligate as it was towards the public money she used to compensate FAS's Rody Molloy for his loss of office. We invested in the education of our graduates, and it's shameful to lose their skills now.
Coughlan's skills, on the other hand, have bamboozled us long enough. Reshuffle her out of government -- and out of harm's way.
It's provocatively simplistic to present emigration as an asset. I'd call this one bungle too many, but she passed the point of no return long ago.
In an Australian radio interview in 1999, Mary Harney, a previous office-holder in Enterprise, Trade and Employment, described emigration in moving terms: "The families were broken up. Parents had invested heavily in the education of the children. They could no longer sustain schools, post offices, football teams, because the young people had just gone."
She spoke as though the phenomenon was consigned to history. But history has a way of repeating itself. A new wave of emigrants -- men and women we need to help us rebuild this country -- are withdrawing from Ireland, and some of them will never come back.
That's the real curse of emigration.
- Martina Devlin
Irish Independent
