EMIGRATION is causing untold heartache in Cork – Mulvihill

EMIGRATION is causing untold heartache in Cork – ‘breaking familiesapart all over again’ – according to Cllr John Mulvihill, Cork East Labour Candidate. European statistics show more people are leaving Ireland than any other EU member state. This mass exodus, which was preventable, is lamentable, according to Cllr Mulvihill.

“The depth of feeling on doorsteps in relation to emigration is heartbreaking. I spoke to two mothers living in a town land near Whitegate yesterday whose two daughters were leaving this country, one is an accountant and the other an engineer. These mothers are devastated to lose their children to foreign work environments. They despair of the mess that’s been made of this country. Especially so as they lost loved ones to the last great wave of emigration in the 1980’s, when 500,000 people left to find work abroad,” Cllr Mulvihill said.

Latest figures provided by the  Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) suggest that 100,000 people will have to leave this country to find work over the next two years. More than 1,000 people will leave Ireland each week of 2011, totallingan estimated 60,000, with an additional 40,000 to emigrate in 2012.

“Emigration is a cruel reality in towns like Youghal and Cobh which have suffered through lack of investment. It brings true heartbreak to meet people on doorsteps, parents of young and vibrant young people, speaking with sorrow of their children’s plans to emigrate. It drives home the damage that has been done to this country on every level,” Cllr Mulvihill said.

In the year to April 2010 65,300 people left the country, about the same number as left in 2009. In 1989, 70,600 people emigrated, when unemployment was almost 18 per cent. The current unemployment rate for January 2011 stands at 13.4 per cent. “Yes emigration figures will keep live register figures down, but each family’s own suffering is personal, this is a wave of grief felt across Cork and the entire nation. The ancestors of many Irish emigrants have contacted me in Cobh in a bid to find their families down through the years – its a topic we are all to familiar with around here,” Cllr Mulvihill said.