Immigrants and emigrants - A debate we can’t dodge any longer

THIS country’s cyclical dependency on emigration is our greatest social failure since the foundation of the state.

Determined, energetic and, in recent decades, well-educated people have left because we could not support their ambitions.

Even today, after a decade when spending the price of a small farm on a wedding-day party was almost everyday, another generation finds itself in Auckland, Brisbane, Boston or Birmingham. Just like our parents, our children will have cousins in far, faraway places. The curious ones will be strangers met only on once-in-a-lifetime visits to see where it all began, trying to understand the Irish in themselves.