20 reasons why even people with jobs still want to quit this country

AS hundreds of thousands of people have come to live in this country, tens of thousands of Irish people have been leaving it. Emigration has not ended. It just gets missed in the net figures we’ve taken as one of the soundest indicators of our economic boom.

Apparently about 17,000 people have left this year, despite the availability of jobs. Why?

Only this week a guest on my radio programme The Last Word went into a sudden attack on modern-day Irish society when explaining why so many people turn to drugs. It was an escape, he said, from the drudgery and demands of modern-day Irish life. He seemed to strike a chord.