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.