IN RECENTLY daring to dip his toes into the waters of the emigration debate, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has joined a roll call of senior politicians who, over the decades, have talked themselves into trouble by daring to give their assessment of Irish people’s reasons for emigrating. These politicians have been the exception; for a subject so pervasive for so long, it has been one politicians have traditionally avoided engaging with in public, precisely because it is regarded as too emotive and potentially explosive.
While it became obvious by the 1940s and 1950s the issue of emigration could be used by opposition politicians to excoriate the government of the day, as the nationalist narrative of Irish emigration being the fault of British exploitation could not be sustained in an independent state, politicians still had to tread carefully, even when out of power.
In February 1946, for example, during a debate on a Local Government Bill, the discussion turned to emigration, after which Fine Gael leader Richard Mulcahy, then leading the opposition, was accused by Fianna Fáil of being “an emigrating agent or recruiting sergeant for another country” because he had dared to describe some of the attractions England offered to Irish citizens.
The use of such loaded and militaristic language harked back to the traditional nationalist response to emigration and was regarded by an Irish Times editorial writer as indicating there were members of the government “who resent any public mention of emigration. That attitude is both wrong and unhelpful. The labourers and the unemployed of this country know perfectly what Great Britain has to offer them and there is no point in any effort to conceal the facts.”
The following year, Fianna Fáil decided to establish a commission on population problems but it was not convened until April 1948, when the new inter-party government was in power. What became the Commission on Emigration and Other Population Problems sat until 1954, meeting 115 times. It took so long to issue its report there were occasional quips that the commission members themselves had emigrated.
But it did mark an attempt to address the underlying economic, social and psychological reasons for emigration during a decade when the emigration figures were truly startling and frightening – by the end of the 1950s half a million had left the Republic. While the commission was deliberating, Éamon de Valera made a serious error of judgment by erroneously insisting at a Fianna Fáil function in 1951 that “work is available at home, and in conditions infinitely better from the point of view of both health and morals . . . There is no doubt that many of those who emigrate could find employment at home at as good, or better, wages – and with living conditions far better – than they find in Britain.”
He also accused emigrants of leaving “enterprises for the development of our own national resources without sufficient labour to enable progress to be made as rapidly as we would all desire”. When he realised the anger his comments had caused, de Valera stubbornly stood over them, arrogantly insisting he had made his intervention “because I believed a public statement was the quickest and most effective way of getting proper attention paid to the situation and of ensuring that a remedy will be provided.”
In a caustic response, republican socialist Peadar O’Donnell suggested the real focus should be on conditions in Ireland, and that “it has become fashionable to look on emigration as a sort of mental weakness in our people”. The following week, de Valera received a large number of telegrams from Irish emigrants in England, most critical of his handling of the issue. Many emigrants also wrote to Irish newspapers to express their anger.
There was also a furore in October 1987 when Tanáiste Brian Lenihan, in an interview with Newsweek magazine in the US, was quoted as saying in relation to Irish emigration “we shouldn’t be defeatist or pessimistic about it. We should be proud of it. After all, we can’t all live on a small island.”
When president Mary Robinson addressed the houses of the Oireachtas in February 1995 on the theme “Cherishing the Irish Diaspora”, she became conscious it was not going down well. “I felt it as I was speaking”, she told her official biographers, “I felt there was a resistance . . . I have rarely spoken to a less responsive audience”.
Her address had a political edge because of its relevance to issues that were generating contemporary debate, including whether there was an onus on Irish governments to contribute more substantially to emigrants’ welfare, and if emigrants should be allowed to vote in elections to the Seanad. Politicians, it seemed, did not want such discussions.
Noonan can plead his remarks about a new generation of emigrants and lifestyle options were quoted selectively and out of context. In a similar way, Lenihan in 1987 could claim he was emphasising the educational qualifications of emigrants and the need for the US Congress to do something about the status of the illegal Irish.
Further back, de Valera could cite his motivation as concern about reports on the poor living conditions of some Irish emigrants in Britain. But the reactions to the various interventions over the years prove politicians’ remarks about emigration are usually regarded as insensitive and ill-judged, because whatever about nuance or context they are invariably seen as exaggerating the notion of choice, ignoring the pain of dislocation and displacement and seemingly much more intent on addressing who is emigrating rather than how to end it, thus absolving themselves of responsibility.
No doubt the profile of emigrants and their experiences have changed over the decades, but one thing has remained constant: the solution to emigration. After the Commission on Emigration was established in 1948, satirical magazine Dublin Opinion established its own commission and concluded, “The Commission furnishes its report after having sat for five seconds. The people emigrate because they think they will do better elsewhere. They will return when they think they will do better here”.
Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD