Ms Marie-Claire McAleer:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to make a presentation on the theme of youth emigration. I will base my input on the research referred to by the Chairman and published last May entitled Time to Go. It is a qualitative research study that explored the experience and impact of emigration on the current wave of new young emigrants who left Ireland in the past two years and emigrated to the UK and Canada.

The study identifies the push and pull factors influencing Ireland’s young to emigrate and explores the policy implications of sustained emigration of young people from Ireland. For details on the background to the research, the research methodology, the key research findings and all of the report's recommendations, I refer the committee to the report that was circulated to Members in advance. Given the time limitations I shall focus on the most salient and relevant aspects of the research. There are seven report recommendations but I shall focus on the three most relevant to the work of the committee. They are as follows: the appointment of a ministry with responsibility for responding to and connecting with the Irish abroad; the need to develop and adopt a new strategic approach to meet the needs of new young emigrants; and the needs for centralised and ongoing data collection on emigrants.

As the Chairman has said, we all know emigration has become a prevailing part of Irish society. It is worth reflecting on the statistics in this regard. According to the most recent estimates compiled by the Central Statistics Office have revealed that 177,000 young people aged between 15 and 24 years of age have left the country over the past five years, and 89,000 people left the State in the year up to April 2013. At the start of the recession, outward migration was mainly accounted for by workers from new EU member states. Since 2010 emigration by Irish nationals has increased significantly and now accounts for more than half of total emigration.

Data collected by the NYCI has revealed that over the past two years over a quarter of the population has been affected by the emigration of a close family member and 51% of 18 to 24-year olds would consider emigrating. It is widely acknowledged that the number of people emigrating is concentrated heavily on the youth population.

Despite high levels of unemployment, poor labour market status and increasing emigration by Irish nationals, Ireland still receives significant immigration.