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Institutes of Tech launch programme aimed at 2nd- and 3rd-generation Irish abroad

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Well over a decade ago, I attended an event in Boston in which an Irish-born parent bemoaned the fact that he was unable to afford to send his children to college in Ireland, as they would be required to pay the full fee applicable to non-EU residents.  This was, of course, despite the fact that these children of Irish-born parents were Irish citizens themselves.  Citizenship was irrelevant in deciding college costs; residency was all. The situation seemed yet another way in which Ireland’s institutions at the time were so often indifferent to the desire of the Irish abroad to maintain connections, and to the additional advantages that could be gained by deepening relations with the second-generation Irish abroad.

So it was with great interest that I learned of a new initiative to be launched by the Taoiseach in Washington DC tomorrow.  Led by Brian McNamara of the Waterford Institute of Technology, the “Ireland Homecoming Study Programme” will entitle mostly at second- and third-generation Irish people living in non-EU countries to study at one of eight Institutes of Technology for a discount of as much as 40% off the non-EU residency rate.

The ITs involved in the pilot programme, which is supported by Enterprise Ireland, are Athlone, Blanchardstown, Carlow, Cork, Dundalk Galway/Mayo, Sligo, and Waterford.  Students may take undergraduate degree courses or shorter courses of study. The target is for 500 students over the next three years, with the qualification requirements is roughly the same as for citizenship eligibility.

IHSP creator and co-ordinator Brian McNamara  said:

“The ‘Global Irish’ can now obtain very affordable qualifications in Ireland through the IHSP. As a nation, we have long recognised the important role that the Irish Diaspora or Global Irish play in promoting Irish culture and trade. This initiative will offer a practical benefit to the off-spring of Irish people abroad by allowing their children obtain an exceptional Irish education at highly competitive rates. The programme will aim to attract over 500 students over the next three years contributing an estimated €10 million to the Irish economy�.

Gerry Murray, Chief Executive of Institutes of Technology Ireland (IOTI), added:

“We intend that this exciting new programme will generate a new crop of goodwill ambassadors to promote Irish commerce and culture worldwide. The eight Institutes in this pilot scheme have been carefully chosen for their academic range and excellence, research reputation, cultural and social infrastructure. It is a win-win opportunity for ambitious students and for Ireland.�

This is an initiative which feels very much in keeping with the spirit of the recent Farmleigh Global Economic Forum; I feel like I’m sounding like a broken record these days, but I’m delighted to see these kinds of initiatives which are as much about giving back to the diaspora as they are about the diaspora’s benefits to Ireland. Win-win moves like this are much to be applauded.

More information on and applications for participation in the IHSP for the eligible children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Irish emigrants can be accessed at www.irelandhsp.com. See also the programme’s Facebook page.

Related pages:

A President’s Notebook: Education and the Irish Diaspora

Ireland Homecoming Study Programme:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter

Regional, youth Farmleighs to follow Global Irish Economic Forum

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin has released the “Progress Report on Follow-up to The Global Irish Economic Forum”. The report outlines a number of initiatives that have been undertaken following the Global Irish Economic Forum, which was held at Farmleigh in September 2009.  The forum had two aims: first, to explore how the Irish abroad could contribute to economic recovery, and second, to examine ways in which Ireland and its global community could develop a more strategic relationship with each other.

While the Forum has in the past few months occasionally been criticised in the media as a talking shop, it’s clear the government is trying to demonstrate the impact of the event on its economic strategy. The report include specific projects in the areas of diaspora engagement,  economic policy, culture, innovation, tourism, greentech, international financial services, and agriculture and food. Among the ideas on diaspora engagement are:

• Global Irish Network – This network of 300 people in 37 countries was launched and held its first meeting on 4 February. The network is intended to serve as a resource for the Government in promoting Ireland’s economic, cultural and tourism messages in key markets.
• Regional “Farmleighs” – Meetings in a number of countries with visiting members will take place in 2010.
• Supporting business and technology networks – The Government has funded the Irish Technology Leadership Group in Silicon Valley with $251,000; Craig Barrett has been appointed the new chair of the ITLG. An Irish Innovation Centre is due to open in California “in the first quarter of 2010”.
• Farmleigh Overseas Graduate Programme – The Government is working to establish a programme to facilitate up to 500 graduate placesments abroad; the initial focus will be in Asia.
• Youth Forum for the Global Irish – The DFA is working with the Ireland Funds to convene a Forum in June 2010 for 100 younger members of the global Irish community.
• Gateway Ireland – John McColgan of Riverdance is moving this private-sector initiative forward, aimed at creating “a new high-quality Irish portal website”.
• Diaspora Bond – The Government is examining the feasiblity of extending the National Solidarity Bond, announced in Budget 2010, to non-Irish residents.
• Local Diaspora Strategies – Each Irish embassy is producing a strategy aimed at supporting and enhancing engagement with the local Irish community.

There are more proposals under the aforementioned other subheadings.  Some of the ideas that are under development include:

As someone who’s been studying Ireland’s engagement with its diaspora for years, it’s clear to me that we’ve entered a new era in our relationship with the Irish abroad.

Some of these ideas might be a hard sell (diaspora bonds, anyone?), but even more important than the new initiatives are the enhanced desire for engagement by the Irish government.  Recent years have seen extraordinary changes and an increasingly sophisticated relationship developing between Ireland and our diaspora. Part of this has been influenced by changing trends in global diaspora strategies, much of it by Ireland’s peculiar circumstances. It will be exciting to see how this relationship grows, and particularly how the Irish diaspora will respond to this increasing outreach.

See the entire report at the GlobalIrishForum website.

Related pages on GlobalIrish.ie:

• NY to get Irish Arts Center with €2.3 million grant
• Work starts on Global Irish Economic Forum idea
• Tweets from Global Irish Economic Forum
• Global Irish Economic Forum: a report
• Global Economic Forum East – China turns to its diaspora
• Global Irish Economic Forum: The speeches
• Global Irish Economic Forum: thoughts from participants
• Global Irish Economic Forum: first thoughts
• Count me out, says O’Leary
• 180 to attend Global Economic Forum
• Global Irish Economic Forum to focus on growth, relationship

• Would diaspora bonds work for Ireland’s finances?

President visits Irish in England

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

President Mary McAleese visited with the Irish community in Britain  over the past two days. Her visit included a tour of the 20120 Olympic site in East London, which afforded her an opportunity to talk to the Irish construction workers employed there.

Out of the 9,000 workers on the site, 10% are Irish, according to an RTE report. The president said:

‘This very exciting project is proving very beneficial to Ireland on many levels, first of all, as you know, the construction industry in Ireland has come to a bit of a stand still and there are a lot of people looking for opportunities outside Ireland. Many of them have found those opportunities here, builders, surveyors, project managers, architects and anybody involved in the construction business hoping to get work here.

‘Evidence of the Irish contribution here is all around, the names on many of the hoardings are very very familiar, all associated with the Irish construction sector, I am very proud that 10% of the work force here is Irish. They are involved in everything from lifting the blocks to major architectural projects. That’s very good news. That’s at the construction phase, and then there is the fit out phase.

‘That’s a very important element for us in terms of supplying goods and services. I was talking to one contractor this morning who bringing in cladding from north of Dublin. A good example of work being generated and opportunities being generated back in Ireland thanks to the Oympic site.’

During her visit, Ms McAleese also visited the Irish Centre in Reading. In London, she met the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas and the Irish Chaplaincy in Britain, as well as the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith.

Related websites:

• RTE.ie: McAleese visits London 2012 site
• Remarks by President McAleese at a Reception at the Embassy of Ireland, London, 1st March 2010
• Remarks by President McAleese to Hammersmith Irish Cultural Centre, 1st March 2010
• Remarks by President McAleese to Reading and District Irish Association, Reading, England, 28th February 2010

Too early to give up immigration reform fight, NY Times says

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

The New York Times has called for a renewed commitment to comprehensive immigration reform in the US in an editorial today. The editorial says that the US needs to confront the issue, with a solution that “would clamp down on the border and the workplace, streamline legal immigration and bring 12 million illegal immigrants out of the shadows”. It notes that the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress say they remain committed to comprehensive reform this year, despite “the poisonous stalemate on Capitol Hill”.

Remarkably, it mentions the recent declaration by the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform that the issue is dead. From the editorial:

At least one advocacy group, the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, has declared the dream of comprehensive reform dead. It is urging incremental change, with modest reforms like the Dream Act. Other groups may follow. It is too soon to give up.

Some Irish activists have been criticised in the past for being too willing to look for a special solution that would assist the undocumented Irish with a separate solution. Yesterday, Niall O’Dowd, speaking on Pat Kenny’s RTE 1 radio show, said that he believed the only option was a series of piecemeal solutions. One that he mentioned was a  visa agreement between Ireland and the US similar to US agreements with Australia and Chile; this would give Irish people access to non-permanent visas, renewable every two years. While this would ensure continuing Irish access to the US, it’s a solution that would presumably be unavailable to the tens of thousands of Irish estimated to be in the US illegally right now.

The New York Times adds that legislation in the house is being prepared by Representative Luis Gutierrez, and a similar bill for the Senate by Charles Schumer and Lindsay Graham.

The Irish Echo seems to agree with the New York Times that there is life in the process yet. In last week’s edition, it said, “One source close to the legislative process admitted to what he called ‘a very challenging (legislative) environment’ but added that reports of reform’s demise were premature.”

Here’s hoping  it’s too early to give up the fight.

Related webpages:

• NYTimes.com: Reform, on Ice
• IrishCentral.com: Immigration reform is dead (Feb 20)
• IrishEcho.com: Reform not dead, but hanging by a thread (Feb 24)

No choice but to emigrate, young people tell Irish Times

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

The Irish Times has carried a number of articles in the last week highlighting the perspectives of emigrants.

On Friday, two young, recent emigrants wrote of their experiences. Paul Bradfield wrote that he is moving for an unpaid internship in The Hague, and hopes that employment will follow.

Here are a few excerpts:

I went not for the want of pleasure or enjoyment, nor to seek a “gap� year full of congenial experiences. The very term “gap� year implies that there is a distinct point in the future upon which the “gap� will be filled, whereupon one returns home to fulfil the innately human desire of carving out a career for oneself, or to simply settle into an agreeable existence in the place of one’s birth. Provided of course, you are able to return. Like many young Irish men and women who have gone before and will go after me, I go because I must.

Witness the exodus. The lost generation is leaving. Moreover, judging by the demographic of attendees of recent emigration seminars held around the country, married couples with young children are also embarking upon the uncertain but now necessary voyage of emigration, to make a better life for themselves and their progeny. To Australia, Canada, the UK and Europe they are heading.

Read the whole letter on the Irish Times website.

A second young person, Sarah Moore, wrote that she was “disgusted at the recent comments on emigration by the Tanaiste Mary Coughlan”. Sarah is a university graduate with a higher diploma in nursing who reports that she has had several job offers from English hospitals. She says:

I, a young person of 23, have recently moved to London to take up a job. And despite Ms Coughlan’s assertions about my generation, I did not move to enjoy myself. I left my family, my friends and all that I hold dear behind because I had to.

I moved because my native country has nothing to offer me because of the self-interest, the naked greed, the croneyism of those in positions of power in Government and in financial institutions. These are the people who robbed a whole generation of a future in Ireland and they are still making the decisions about our country.

Are we the most compliant nation on Earth, or what?

Read the rest of the letter on the Irish Times website.

And on Tuesday, a letter from an older emigrant echoed the themes of the two younger emigrants.  Tom Healy of Plymouth, England, emigrated in 1962 “not to enjoy myself but. . . to avoid a life of poverty in Ireland”. He says her comments “led me to reflect on how little the situation has changed since I boarded a flight at Dublin for Bristol.”

I had left school two years before; my parents could not afford to put me through higher education. My future, for what it was worth, lay in a succession of low-paid, insecure jobs with plenty of bouts of unemployment in between. I wasted reams of paper and expended a small fortune on postage to make job applications that seldom elicited an acknowledgment, let alone an interview.

In despair, I left for England, where I have lived and worked since. The leaving was difficult and painful. Fitting in took much effort, but eventually I adjusted to life here. For a few years I entertained the hope that I might be able to return and tried to do so, only to run up against the barriers which made people like me in the Ireland of the time unable to find work. I refer to the croneyism and insider relationships which plagued the Ireland of the time and appear never to have gone away. Those who achieved their place in the sun post-Independence had no time for those caught on the outside, for that would have required changes which might have reduced their influence and status and upset their cosy world.

Emigration, I must tell Ms Moore, is as much an instrument of Government policy now as then, and as in the 19th century. Those of us who leave provide the safety- valve that allows the rotten shower in power to avoid having to create a more just and fair society.

It might well be better to stay at home and raise hell to change the odiously corrupt system which existed when I was young and which seems to have changed but little in the almost 50 years since I left.

Read the whole letter on the Irish Times website.

This makes for bleak reading. It was only two years ago that Bertie Ahern was being lauded for putting an end to involuntary emigration. He himself regarded it as one of the key achievements of his administration, saying in his resignation speech:

In looking back on all the things I wanted to achieve in politics, I am proud that as Taoiseach I have:

– delivered on my objective to bring the peace process to fruition;
– delivered on my objective to see a stable administration based on the power-sharing model take root in Northern Ireland;
– delivered successive social partnership agreements which underpin our social and economic progress;
– delivered a modern economy with sustainable growth in employment and brought an end to the days of forced emigration;
– delivered on my objective to improve and to secure Ireland’s position as a modern, dynamic and integral part of the European Union.

What a difference two years makes.

Emigration won’t dilute human capital, says Davy analysis

Friday, February 19th, 2010

An analysis from Davy has gotten a lot of news attention today.  The research report into the Irish economy says that we wasted the boom, and issues a damning verdict on how Ireland misallocated its investment from 2000 to  2008, resulting in poor infrastructure with inadequate roads, rail, schools, hospitals and telecoms.

One area where the report is suprisingly reassuring, however, is in the analysis of emigration.

This analysis of our capital stock has one glaring omission: human capital. Looking to the medium term, this is Ireland’s greatest strength. The economy has the highest number of graduates in the 25-34 population in the EU-27, with the exception of Cyprus. That proportion (and its average quality) may depreciate somewhat if recovery does not take hold and emigration accelerates. But so far the outflow through emigration has been hyped while ignoring the mix.

First, net inward migration has turned negative mainly because immigration (people coming to Ireland) has collapsed rather than due to a surge in emigration (people leaving).

Second, a high proportion of those who have left are low-skilled and worked in construction where employment has more than halved. Construction, by its very nature, is a highly labour-intensive and low-productivity industry. Workers tend to be mobile, and emigration from this sector will not particularly dilute the quality of human capital in Ireland.

Moreover, the nascent recovery of the international-traded sectors will keep many of our graduates at home. Longer-term, investment in education must remain the salient priority.

I would dispute the assertion that there has been no surge in emigration. The emigration figures from Ireland were up 43% between 2008 and 2009, and up 145% between 2004 and 2009.  The new phenomenon, of course, is that the majority of emigrants were going to the newer countries of the EU, and were thus presumably immigrants returning home.  This is obviously not the same thing as suggesting there has been no upsurge in emigration.

The characterisation of the current emigrant outflow being comprised mostly of construction workers and therefore not “diluting the quality of human capital” rests uneasily with me. First, I’m not aware of recent studies that break down emigration by occupational sector (please let me know if you know of any), so I’m presuming this is based on anecdotal evidence.  There appears to be plenty of anecdotal evidence asserting, however, that it is not just manual labourers but also third-level graduates who are leaving. (In today’s Irish Times alone, for example, two graduates tell their emigration tales.)

It’s also at odds with the Tanaiste’s recent comments that emigration today is comprised of those Irish young people who are emigrating “to gain experience” and “want to enjoy themselves’ and  are leaving “with degrees, PhDs. They are people who have a greater acumen academically and they have found work in other parts of the world.”

So on the one hand, we are reassured that we need not trouble ourselves with the upsurge in emigration because (a) it’s really not happening and (b) it’s not going to lower the quality of our labour force, and on the other hand, we need not trouble ourselves with the upsurge in emigration because these are highly educated people “who want to enjoy themselves”.

Obviously, this is a complex issue. We’ve heard very little of ‘brain drain’ with this upsurge of emigration, because the model of “brain circulation” has largely displaced the concept of permanent loss in migration thinking. We know from the boom that networks of well-educated Irish people can be an asset for our economy, no matter where they live, and many of them may eventually return if there is a return to substantial growth.

In terms of economic costs, emigration’s toll may not be all that harsh. Obviously, in the short term, emigration is a tried-and-true safety valve; sending off surplus labour will save social welfare money, and relieving the pressure on the unemployment rate will certainly make our economic performance look better on paper. And each unemployed person who leaves is one fewer potentially angry voter when it comes to election time.

But involuntary emigration carries very high potential human costs, and any analysis that does not take those into account is not looking at the full picture.  Davy might call it  “hype”, but the concern over rising emigration rates reflects Ireland’s long experience with a phenomenon many of us thought was gone forever.

See the report on the Davy.ie website

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