A return to a Safe Home

BEFORE there was an IMF, before there was a European Union, Irish people had to rely on her economic migrants to keep the home fires burning.

Forced to leave a country who could neither feed nor house her own, they sent back whatever money they could, a figure which would run to the billions today. But what exactly are the people back home doing for them as they approach their final days?

Set up in January 2000, the Safe Home programme is a national organisation that seeks to assist older Irish-born emigrants to return to the town in which they were born and raised. So far it has repatriated 1,237 people from all over the world and is currently processing a further 915 applications.