Goodbye Ireland - ABC Australia Pt2

Goodbye, My Ireland Broadcast: 17/02/2011
Reporter: Emma Alberici

You can see them every day at Dublin's International Airport. Couples locked in teary embraces, damp-eyed mums and dads farewelling sons and daughters. Friends promising to stay in touch.
1000 people are leaving each week, heading to the four corners of the world in search of work and a better life. Many, like electrician Alan Niland and chef Sean Sherry are going to Australia.

"Leaving here is a big thing and everyone doesn't want to go. It's a last resort really." ALAN NILAND Irish Electrician

Alan's heading to Melbourne and the promise of a job with an Irish electrician. Sean Sherry has been unemployed for the first time in a 25 year career and his fruitless job search has dragged on for 12 months. He now has no choice but to leave his girlfriend and her daughter and take up a job offer on a cruise ship operating from Australia. He has to work to service the mortgage on a house that has crashed in value.

"I was driving home one day and I just had a panic attack. What will I do? (I was) on the motorway. I had to pull in. I was just panicking: 'what will I do?' My God, I can't get a job." SEAN SHERRY Irish Chef

Sean and Alan are the human faces of a savagely battered economy. Ireland flew fast and high on the back of easy money and a contrived real estate boom. When the GFC hit, highly leveraged economies like Iceland, Greece and Ireland were disasters waiting to happen.

"We went from being a country with a banking system to a banking system with a country stuck onto it because the banks became three times bigger than the gross national product of the country" DAVID McWILLIAMS Economist

As Ireland prepares to go to the polls looking to punish politicians complicit in the economic failure and hoping for a government that can lead them out of the mess, reporter Emma Alberici examines the harrowing human experiences surrounding Ireland's Generation Exit.

"All our young people are going. It's not only the immigrants that have come into the country and gone home. It's all our young people, all our own are going." RITA NILAND Alan Niland's mum

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Goodbye
• Ireland
• ABC
• Australia
• Pt2

[HerresKoolaid]

@DaVeSnoop32 Oh how is it? Do you like the weather? What is your job? Do you have citizenship?

[1997seanmac]

@IslamsVisionofWorld the amount of nigerians have halfed! and there emigration is at 10%

[Burncourtable]

@annagilda1 He is dead and to be fair the shit had well and truly hit the fan before he took office.

[sidvidkid]

i left in 05 for nz was obvious to me country was being raped and pillaged by fake pirate government...mc williams was the only one i heard tell the truth and when he got the boot off newstalk i knew time was short...but still the scumbags ahern, mc creevy, mc dowell et al have their liberty and no one is screaming for them to be locked up, and the bootlicking porter swilling irish take it up a**e with narry a whimper...blame the pols yea, but only got selves to blame, wish i was icelandic..

[TrueNovice]

@IslamsVisionofWorld just got an email from a friend in Nigeria - DEAR SIR,

URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL

I AM MARIAM ABACHA, WIDOW OF THE LATE NIGERIAN HEAD OF STATE, GEN. SANI ABACHA. AFTER HE DEATH OF MY HUSBAND WHO DIED MYSTERIOUSLY AS A RESULT OF CARDIAC ARREST, I WAS INFORMED BY OUR LAWYER, BELLO GAMBARI THAT, MY HUSBAND WHO AT THAT TIME WAS THE PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA ...Anyone else?

[annagilda1]

Brian Lenihan, you Bollocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lousypenguin]

3.50 Teeth fail

[DaVeSnoop32]

From cork,been in brisbane 2 years now

[weeknightingale]

Thanks for posting this! So interesting. Jobs are tight all over even here in Southern California.