Hopelessness is driving Galway families to emigration

Families in the West of Ireland, who on the face of it don’t ‘need’ to emigrate, are upping sticks anyway because of the prevailing sense of despair and hopelessness regarding the future of the country.

Dáil Deputy Denis Naughten has painted a bleak and depressing picture of the scale and extent of emigration on the ground in Galway, Roscommon and the West of Ireland.

The former Fine Gael now independent TD said a new trend was emerging whereby even though the parents are both in decent enough jobs and have only small managable debts, they are pulling the children out of school and emigrating to Australia, England and North America because they see no future for their children here.

“This is a new thing. These are people that you would, on the face of it, think are doing quite well. It is a worrying trend. I’ve come across a number of cases, including a couple of families in Galway, where whole families are emigrating.

“These are cases where the two parents are in jobs and the children are in school but they are deciding to go anyway because they don’t see a long term future for themselves or their children in this country. They don’t see a roadmap; they don’t see any hope,” said Deputy Naughten.

He pointed out that in the 1980s, it was generally unheard of that entire families would up and leave.

“I could count 50 or more families where the father emigrated and sent back money and the children stayed in Ireland with their mother. You see people are emigrating now, and they have no job and no prospect – that’s not new. But what is new is this worrying trend whereby families are leaving because they feel there is no hope.

“They feel their is no vision or blueprint for where we want to be as a country in five or 10 years,” he said.

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