Irish Examiner poll - Our country is broken but we can fix it

APART from the Great Famine few things have scarred our national psyche as deeply as emigration.

Though its legacy has not been entirely negative, it is the constant, corrosive undercurrent that recognised, for too many, opportunity lay elsewhere. It has divided parents from children, brothers from sisters and forced millions of Irish people to accept that their country could not offer them economic opportunity much less security.

As Tuesday’s day of reckoning approaches, today’s Irish Examiner/Lansdowne Millward Brown poll shows that we are at that sorry, draining point once again. Nearly one-in-three of those aged between 18 and 24 intend to leave Ireland in the next year. Across all age groups one-in-10 people are planning to leave. If you confine that question to men, that increases to a harrowing 12%.