The Skype generation

AS the recession has tightened its grip, more and more families have said tearful goodbyes to parents forced, through economic necessity, to leave their loved ones behind and, hunter-gatherer-style, jet off to jobs on the other side of the globe.

With about 192,000 people on the live register, Ireland’s unemployment rate is the sixth highest in the EU, and our emigration rates are staggering — in the last four years alone 300,000 people have left these shores in search of work abroad.

This may well be remembered as the Skype generation — one parent running the home, solo, while the other lives the ‘single life’, far away, keeping in contact through technology.