Date:   2/21/2011 7:14:09 PM ( 13 y ago)
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/22/3145278.htm?section=justin


Failing government prompts Irish exodus

By Emma Alberici

Updated 1 hour 11 minutes ago
Protesters burn a placard with a picture of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen

The Irish Government is set to get trounced in elections this week due to the country's economic woes (AFP : Peter Muhly)



Irish voters go to the polls this week as an ailing economy is forcing record numbers of disillusioned citizens to flee the country in search of a better life overseas.

Less than three months after the government accepted an international bailout worth $115 billion to rescue an economy on life support, the public is furious with the entire political class.

Fianna Fail is the centre-left party which has been in government for 60 of the 89 years of Ireland's independence.

Polls indicate they will be trounced in Friday's election and will be lucky to come away with 20 seats out of a possible 166.

Until three years ago, the little country the size of Tasmania was experiencing 6 per cent growth and was the envy of Europe.

Low taxes kept foreign firms investing, but the people who became known as the I-rich became obsessed with property - not buying and selling, but building.

Banks and developers, encouraged by the government, got so carried away in some areas that they built more houses than there were families to fill them.

Now there are 300,000 homes lying empty in what have come to be known as "ghost estates".

Finance minister Brian Lenihan admits it was wrong to allow the construction sector to become so big.

"We had an unsustainable building boom, construction boom in this country from 2003 to 2008," he said.

"My party leader has taken full responsibility for this. So have I."

History repeating

In a case of history repeating itself, residents of County Mayo in the west of Ireland are emigrating in what is expected to be record numbers.

It is the same place from which many of the famine boats left back in the 1840s when a wave of emigration washed 1 million people away from the country.

Close to 500,000 fled the country in the 1980s and now they are off again, with around 1,000 people heading for the exits every week.

At a seminar on the outskirts of Dublin, an audience of 700 arrives for a monthly information night on economic opportunities in Australia.

Australian visa applications from Dublin in the past 12 months are up 60 per cent, and one local said employment opportunities in Ireland were so dire that he had to make a change.

"By working it out and making the big trip and the big change over to Australia for better opportunities for ourselves and the kiddies," he said.

Others expressed similar sentiments on work prospects.

"I've been working the last 25 years. [For the] first time in my life I am unemployed. To be honest I don't see any prospects of employment in the near future," one said.

"There's no way I want to bring kids up here, especially after being over in Australia and seeing what it's like and talking to people. I basically just made my mind up when I got there," said another.

'Degenerate bust'

Former Irish central bank economist David McWilliams is credited with being the first to have warned of a credit crisis looming back in 2001.

"We've never had a boom before so in a way our boom was much more amplified, because it was totally new and unfortunately our bust is much more degenerate," he said.

"We went from being a country with a banking system to a banking system with a country stuck onto it, because the banking system became three times bigger than the gross national product of the country, which is kind of phenomenal."

Immigration may well have become the hottest topic of this election campaign, but those who leave the country no longer have a say in Ireland's future.

On departure day they lose the right to vote.
 

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