When Mary Robinson addressed the Oireachtas in 1995 on the subject of “cherishing the Irish diaspora”, the audience seemed underwhelmed. Robinson, then president, was conscious the speech was not going down well. “I felt it as I was speaking,” she later told her official biographers, Helen Burke and Olivia O’Leary. “I felt there was a resistance ... I have rarely spoken to a less responsive audience.”
Up to that point in Irish political or public discourse, “diaspora” had rarely been used as a term. Historically, Irish politicians had been reluctant to engage in debate about emigration as it encompassed sensitive matters of exile, dislocation, domestic economic and cultural failures, and responsibility for emigrant welfare. The scale of its impact was enormous, before and after independence: by 1891 at least 38.3 per cent of Irish-born people lived outside Ireland; more than half a million left between 1945 and 1960; and in the 1980s there was net outward migration of more than 200,000.
Robinson’s address also had an edge because of a contemporary suggestion that emigrants might be allowed to elect three Irish senators and because she questioned collective amnesia by quoting Eavan Boland’s poem The Emigrant Irish: “Like oil lamps, we put them out the back, / of our houses, of our minds”.
Numerous scholars have debated the use of the description “diaspora” in relation to the Irish migrant experience. In the same year as Robinson’s address, the historian of Irish emigration, Donald Akenson, suggested the word could become a “massive linguistic weed”.
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Its use has become so common and elastic since then that his prediction has been borne out. As another historian, Joe Lee, pointed out, such malleability means scholars and others “will find the diaspora they want”.
The Government’s Ireland’s Diaspora Strategy 2026-30 was launched recently and begins with words of President Catherine Connolly from her inauguration speech: “I want to acknowledge our large and growing diaspora. There is hardly a family on this island that does not have a personal experience of migration. On every continent our emigrants have put their ingenuity and hard work at the service of new homelands. Yet they have kept their love of Ireland and its culture deep in their hearts.”
The new strategy suggests the Irish diaspora is now there to be embraced and celebrated, but at some distance. The main thrust of the document is billed as “diaspora diplomacy in action”. Based on nine months of consultations (“in 27 cities across 17 countries”), and the first online consultation with the Irish abroad, it includes headings about identity, wellbeing and culture, as well as being preoccupied with “advancing Ireland’s interests and values globally”.
There are significant caveats, however: “During the in-person and online consultations, there were some issues raised that fall beyond the scope of this strategy, including housing and the cost of living”.
But these are key reasons why people emigrate and find it difficult to return. Neale Richmond, the junior minister with responsibility for international development and diaspora, acknowledges conflicting emotions: “We heard heartbreaking and heart-warming stories from people who left Ireland decades ago, from recent emigrants and from individuals and families who plan to return someday.”
The challenges they face if desiring to return, it is argued, are “not unique to the diaspora but also affect people living in Ireland ... We will enhance our engagement with those outside Government in sectoral representative bodies and the private sector to seek their consideration of issues raised”.
There is much in the strategy that is worthy, including the desire “to nurture vibrant and inclusive global Irish communities”. Festivals, cultural and academic events and sporting clubs can achieve much as can bolstering the Emigrants Supports Programme, in existence since 2004, and counselling for abuse survivors. There is a recognition that the vulnerable and older Irish abroad need access to support networks.
But there is plenty of sparkly waffle as well: “Our approach is rooted in the advice that we should continue to embrace the layered nature of our overseas communities and recognise that each is a unique tapestry woven in response to their own story, interests and needs.” There is sparse funding: the 2026 budget for supporting the diaspora is €17.5 million. Emigrant voting rights in presidential elections “will remain under review”.
It is nice to know there is a hurling club in Buenos Aires. But the impression is very much of a strategy designed to sidestep the reality of why Irish people emigrate and how difficult it is to come home. What has been opted for is a new version of avoiding confrontation with failure in favour of corporate soundbites, summed up in the proud assertion that Ireland will be “a world leader in the field of diaspora engagement”, instead of a country in which young people can see their future.
