Mary Kenny
Ireland’s welcome to immigrants – from the EU and elsewhere – is admirable, and, at an anecdotal level, I have heard plenty of praise around the country about such young people who come to Ireland to work.
The catering and hotel trade, I’ve often heard it said, just couldn’t function without them. I even asked one hotel owner why visitors nowadays seldom encountered an Irish staff member at a hotel reception, and she replied simply: “It’s hard to recruit staff willing to get up at 5am every morning. But these young people from East Europe will do the job.”
Indeed so. There are plenty of hard-working Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians who are much appreciated by their employers.
But turn the subject around and look at it from the point of view of Latvia or Estonia. There is a catastrophic drain of young people from these Baltic states and their populations are falling dramatically. In 2005, Latvia had 2.25 million people: there are now 1.93 million. In Lithuania and Estonia, the neighbouring Baltic states, the populations have fallen commensurately – from 3.34 million to 2.88 in Lithuania and from 1.36 million to 1.31 million in Estonia. Romania, in central Europe, has seen a similar arc of decline.
This is what “the free movement of peoples”, a cornerstone of EU protocols, has done for smaller countries: their young people flee overseas where they can earn more, leaving the home nation a society of older people, and by the logic of the circumstances, fewer births. Little Latvia, in particular, is described as “a disappearing nation”.
Ireland should be able to identify: a similar crisis faced this country in the 1950s, when the population haemorrhaged due to emigration, and the population dipped below the three million mark. The problem was not dissimilar: better wages were drawing Irish workers overseas. And because the economy at home was so sluggish, young people were slow to marry and start a family.
The bishops at the time actively tried to encourage marriage among the young, and often castigated men for being “selfish” in their reluctance to commit to marriage and family life. But youth emigration had an impact on the dynamics. As it does in the Baltic states and parts of central Europe today.
We often hear that immigration is a good thing that adds to the host’s country’s richness and diversity. It certainly can do. But spare a thought for the mother countries left behind – their young, able and fertile fled to better opportunities elsewhere.
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According to ‘The World in 2019’, published by the Economist, Ireland is much richer than many other EU states. GDP per head of the population is $78,530 (as opposed to a mere $43,210 in the United Kingdom, $56,870 in Sweden and $32,370 in Spain). Inflation in Ireland is at a low 1.3%.
On these statistics, Ireland is richer than the UK, Sweden, Germany and France. Could that be really so? There is an asterisk coda added to the $78,000 average income: “Figures inflated by the impact of accounting practices by multinational companies.” I think that means that the multi-nationals keep their budgets in Ireland, but I suppose, that, too, is part of the overall economic picture.
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Ballyragging is not acceptable
Saoirse Ronan, soon on our screens as Mary, Queen of Scots – the Catholic rival to Elizabeth I of England – has been speaking in celebratory mode about repealing the Eighth Amendment in 2018. She is thrilled, she told the Observer, that Ireland now “matches up internationally” as a consequence.
There’s another version of the consequence of that change, in a statement issued by Precious Life in Belfast, founded by the impressive campaigner Bernadette Smyth. “We have had to withstand attacks from the powerful, anti-life forces at Westminster, threats from Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Health Minister Simon Harris, and a flurry of misinformed British ‘celebrities’ demanding that the democratic process and principles of devolution are thrown aside to cater to their agendas.”
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, included Ms Ronan, and everyone is entitled to respect for upholding their ethical values. The ballyragging of pro-life Christians in Northern Ireland by Westminster, Dublin and various celebrities is completely unacceptable, and an interference in a devolved jurisdiction’s laws.