Tony Kett (Fianna Fail)

Successive Governments have made efforts to tackle this problem, with limited success. The commitment given by the previous Government in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness to helping emigrants who are marginalised and socially excluded has led to the setting up of the task force whose report we are discussing. It is right and proper that we should look at how our emigrants are faring in the countries where they have decided to live. This is laudable and the support the Government has received from all sections of the political divide is commendable.

Irish people can be proud of our contribution at all levels to the nations to which we have emigrated. We are always proud to hear Prime Ministers of Australia, Presidents of the United States and political leaders in the United Kingdom giving credit to the contribution of Irish emigrants to their countries. The infrastructures of Australia, Britain and America owe much to the sweat of the brow of Irish emigrants. We are given due credit for that contribution and we should be proud of it.

Many of the people who emigrated from our shores have been successful beyond the seas. Most of them have not forgotten their roots in Ireland. As someone who works with a voluntary organisation I can give testament to an individual who left Ireland in the 1950s and who was successful in Boston. When this person had made his own way in America he undertook to give something back to the nation he had left. Although he had left Ireland out of necessity and had got nothing from Ireland, because there was nothing there to give, he did not forget how proud he was to be an Irishman. He set up a fund raising chapter in Boston particularly for people with a disability in this country. As someone who works with disabled people I can give testament to the magnificent work this man did for the agency with which I work. On his death we were delighted to name a wing of our establishment in his honour. That is an example of the work done by people who have emigrated and of their commitment to their own land.

If we reflect on the bad old days when emigration was involuntary we can only imagine the pain of mothers and fathers, particularly in rural Ireland where emigration was at its worst, who saw 75% of their children emigrate through no fault of their own. I remember the anguish of my own mother when my eldest brother decided to emigrate to England, her joy on his return and her anguish when he had to go back again. I am delighted we can stand here today and say the majority of those who emigrate do so by choice rather than necessity.