Emerald Isle Diaspora 

(By William Underhill)

IRELAND The Irish, given * cruel history ________ massive flight of poverty and famine, are understandably sensitive to any hint of a return to the bad old days. So people worried last month when, _________ the first time since 1995, government statistics showed a rise in net emigration, with 65,000 people choosing to quit the country in the previous year. Commentators were quick to draw parallels with the dismal decades before the “Celtic Tiger” boom, _________ the best of every generation headed overseas in search of work.

But the picture is not as grim as it seems. The numbers are still tiny, especially given that the Irish workforce has doubled in size to about 2 million since the late 1980s. Just as important, more than half of this year’s emigrants are actually foreigners, many of them Eastern European construction workers returning home after the collapse of the Irish property bubble. Fewer than 20,000 of the emigrants were native-born Irish, _________ have never wholly lost their wayfaring ways: even when jobs were plentiful back in 2006, more than 15,000 left home.

It’s true the shamrock exodus could pick up the pace, _________ that’s unlikely, as the latest figures suggest that Ireland’s economy is finally stabilizing. So Emerald Isle dwellers can keep calm; however bleak the immediate future, a big-time brain drain should remain a thing of the past.

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