Emigration from Ireland - Education is the key to all doors

IRELAND and Irishness, whatever that has become, were celebrated around the world yesterday. Often wistfully, sometimes with an indulgence that might make today’s challenges seem more difficult than they are.

All of the St Patrick’s Day events, ironically irreligious for the celebration of a national saint’s feast day, held outside of Ireland have a common lineage. They are rooted in the dreams and lives of emigrants. Some from our time, others remembered, if they are at all, through sepia-tinted photographs or maybe through a musty longshoreman’s union card.

Like every small country with scant natural resources denied political or economic independence for longperiods, emigration is a constant theme in Irish life. The numbers vary, the emotional wrench is constant.