Emigration the only thing keeping unemployment figure down

Date Published: 11-Jan-2012

MANY small rural clubs in the West of Ireland would have a better chance of fielding a football team in Western Australia than in their own parishes, a union representative and councillor claimed this week.

His comments come in the wake of the latest Live Register figures for Galway that showed a 2.2% decrease over the twelve month period from December 2010 to the end of 2011.

However SIPTU official and local Mayo councillor, Michael Kilcoyne, said that any slight changes in the Live Register figures were ‘completely meaningless’ in the context of the mass wave of emigration that has hit the West of Ireland over the past three years.“Every small GAA club in the West has been decimated over recent years. I know of many the club that have more players in Perth in Western Australia than they have in their own parish.

“We have just gone back to the 1950s. We are exporting our young people all over the world and the policies of this Government and the last one haven’t changed one iota. Only the colour has changed – from green to a bluey red,” said Michael Kilcoyne.

He said that the latest estimates for emigration from Ireland were now standing at 120,000 per year – without that mass exodus, he said, the Irish unemployment figure would be close on 800,000. “It’s one cut after the next, and one more tax-take after the next – the people have been bled dry,” said Cllr. Kilcoyne.

The total numbers on the Galway Live Register at the end of December 2011, stood at 22,585, a 0.6% increase from the previous month, but a 2.2% decrease from the same time last year.

With the exception of Clifden (1,341), that showed a 5.3% increase in the Live Register figures, the year-on trend was down in all parts of the county – Ballinasloe (2,526, -7.3%), Gort (1,441, -2.6%), Galway city (11,609, -1.6%), Loughrea (2,355, -3.9%) and Tuam (3,313, -1.7%).

See full story in this week's Connacht Tribune.