Let’s remember our abandoned emigrants

I OFTEN think of the time in the 1940s when I left home on the emigration trail.

While I fared better than some of my mates, it is a fact nonetheless that the thousands of Irishmen and women kept this country going by sending millions of pounds home at that time and for decades to follow.

Now thousands of those men are on the breadline, many of them living alone in grim conditions. They toiled long and hard, sometimes at the risk of losing their lives.

They have been forgotten - home is a dream for every Irish person who returned, but there are many who cannot come back. Often their whereabouts are unknown to their relatives here and their fate, unfortunately is to die in a foreign land and to be buried amongst strangers.

I am delighted with the Celtic Tiger, but the real tigers were the men who went to England, some in cattle boats, during the 1940s and ‘50s and the women who worked on the buses and in hospitals and factories. The lads worked hard on the building sites in England - they helped to make Ireland the prosperous country it is today. They were great people. Let us not forget them.

Kevin Stapleton

16 College Green

Ennis

Co Clare