Graduate exodus - Stop the brain drain

Speaking in Cork last week, former US president Bill Clinton noted that Ireland was the only country in Europe that had a younger workforce than the United States.

“It would be a good thing,” he suggested, “if you could get as many of your young people as possible to hang around here.”

Maybe “hang around” was not the best choice of words, but we know what he meant. In a recent survey of final-year medical students, Senator Colm Burke found that two-thirds of them feel that they will have no alternative but to leave this country. Indeed, almost half are already planning to go.