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Irish Times
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘Are you staying or going?': The question all Irish emigrants eventually face
Ireland's long-standing history of emigration is reflected in a piece by Mark Paul , London Correspondent, in which he says, 'Over the decades the area had been a magnet for Irish immigrants, but the community aged. Younger London Irish now favour Hackney or Clapham. Meanwhile, Archway's green army went grey.' While Mark's piece centres around Martin Fallon, an 'old boy from Ireland' who died in May, he speaks to locals in the traditional London-Irish community about how things have evolved. It's interesting to consider the changing face of the Irish community in London, especially since – for the most part – the whys of leaving their homeland are generally the same after all this time. For Peter Flanagan, he says that when he first moved to the UK, he expected to stay about six months. Now, after six years, however, he's wondering will he ever leave. Having bought his first home in the English capital, though, he feels that's probably an indication – and not a conscious decision – that he's here for good. Despite this, Flanagan says: 'My real fear is staying in the UK so long that I go full Pierce Brosnan. So far removed from my place of origin that I become an awkward facsimile of myself. Half-remembered visions of my childhood blurring with drunken fever dreams. Perched on a barstool in a silk cravat, waxing lyrical about the old country to anyone who will listen. 'I do miss Éire,' I'd slur. 'My father built our family home from clay and sticks on the banks of the river Liffey. I often wonder if it's still standing.'' Something students considering a move to the US should bear in mind are new visa requirements introduced this week. In a statement on Monday, the US embassy in Dublin said the US State Department is 'committed to protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process'. READ MORE The embassy said visa applicants will be required to list all social media usernames or handles for every platform they have used from the last five years on their visa application form so these accounts can be vetted. Taoiseach Micheál Martin condemned the new requirements as 'excessive' and said that they will cause 'fear and anxiety' among young people. Read more about the changes here . Columnist Laura Kennedy says there is always one question she is asked as an emigrant in Australia: 'Are you staying or going?' And while it may be a nudge from loved ones to get you home, it eventually becomes a real question in need of a serious answer. This month, she also looked at what Irish people are good at – digesting dairy, drinking and, of course, emigration. Our shortcoming? Pollen. And, by God, her allergies are not holding back in the hay fever capital of Canberra. As autumn hits down under, it's not letting up either. She writes: 'It does make me miss Limerick a bit, though, and its chaste plant-life that has the decency to die – or to play dead – once autumn shuffles in.' Adrian O'Sullivan, from Cork, has no plans to leave Berlin, which he first visited in 1988 as an 18-year-old. Speaking to Frank Dillon, he says he's noticed subtle changes over the years. 'When I came here first, what I often remarked upon was that, for Germans, everything is absolutely forbidden unless it is allowed whereas, for the Irish, everything is allowed unless it is absolutely forbidden. Sometimes Irish people have come here thinking they can do things the same was as they can in Cahersiveen, but that doesn't work.' Wicklow woman Orla McLaughlin lives in Venice and says she felt connected to the city from early on. She misses friends and family in Ireland, however, and returns once or twice a year, 'though it was easier when the children were younger. You inevitably miss out on some milestones and sharing some of your own too.' Finally, if, when you ask yourself should you stay or go, you decide a return to Ireland is on the cards, you may want to check out our guide on how to go about buying property in Ireland from abroad. Thanks for reading.
Irish Times
07-05-2025
- Irish Times
Emigration is a big, frightening way of learning you are capable of change
Many Irish people seem to harbour a conception of their potential Australian life, whether or not they ever emigrate. I only really realised this after moving to Australia myself, visiting home and watching faces mist over at the mention of this vast country on the other side of the world. 'Ah, Australia!' people would intone breathily, eyes softening as they retreated briefly into some corner of their mind where they appear to have a ready-made set of fantasies about what it might be like to live here. That or they would immediately start talking about big spiders (I moved here in August 2023 and I haven't seen one yet, but I'll keep you posted). The reaction when you tell Irish people you live in Australia tends to be either wistful or begrudging with little in between. On hearing I live here (and I did only tell him because he asked), one man became mildly irate and said that the swimming at Sandycove is just as good as in Sydney, and without any sharks. I was confused because nobody had mentioned the sea, I live inland and have a pretty intense phobia of sharks, but I left him to irately work what felt like a historic disagreement out with himself. While I was lucky to end up in Australia by accident and through absolutely no merit of my own – happening to be married to someone who was offered a job over here – it had never been part of the plan. Not being big on sun or outdoor sports or the ocean, or wildlife that can kill you, I hadn't nursed any fantasy of a secret Australian life. There was no mental image of a more tanned, physically fitter, less stressed Australian immigrant version of me living in the back of my head while my hair fuzzed up and my thermal socks chafed in the whirling, misty damp of a Dublin or London commute. [ The challenges of moving to another country Opens in new window ] Yet, the opportunity to move so far from home and experience a different way of life seemed too interesting to pass up. When we talked about what emigrating would mean, there were plenty of negatives – practicalities such as the significant expense just to get to Australia and rent a place to live, horrendously complex and lengthy visa applications, arranging the logistics of the move, not to mention leaving family and friends behind. READ MORE But we also quickly realised that we had no good reason not to leave London, where we'd been living for six years, and where the cost of living had crept up each year without income following suit, leaving us wondering what we were getting in exchange for long daily commutes and constantly escalating food, water and electricity bills. My work, too, had begun to feel a bit flat. I had been doing the same thing for a long time and started to feel that I wasn't giving it my best in the way I once had. It occurred to me that moving to a new country requires such a leap of faith and imagination that changing your job suddenly begins to feel much less intimidating. Emigration might primarily be a change of location, but it forces you to re-evaluate the entire landscape of your life. The decision to move to another country is a rare opportunity to stick your head over the parapet of routine and comforting familiarity to think about what it is that you would change if you could. While we are who we are wherever we go, we also respond to the environments we live and work in, and we change accordingly. Under a bullying boss, you can become ungenerous, disinterested and resentful. Working on a supportive team, you can become more compassionate, more innovative and better fun. We are different versions of ourselves depending on context. Some people move to a new country for a job, or education, or for a relationship. When you begin again somewhere new, you're presented with opportunities to reinvent yourself and change the aspects of your former behaviour or life that didn't serve you. You can detach from all the preconceived ideas that family might have of you and see yourself in new ways. You can make a career change. Here, I have somehow become a person who goes to the gym three or four times a week Before moving I had been balancing my other writing work with being a beauty editor. Australia was a chance to set that side of my work aside and focus on what I was more interested in doing. The lower cost of living here and more rigidly respected work-life balance allowed me to finally finish and publish my book , something that hadn't felt possible during my life in London and Dublin. We had tired of the mania of living and working in a big city like London. While I could never have imagined a version of my life away from a big city with all its culture and fluidity, moving to Canberra, where everything is slower, cheaper and less oversubscribed, has meant a more peaceful and content way of life. A new version of myself. I had been beating myself up in London for failing to exercise enough when I worked most days until after 10pm. Here, I have somehow become a person who goes to the gym three or four times a week because it's a 15-minute walk from my front door and I can stop working without guilt at six o'clock. While it's not the only way to change your life, and the swimming in Sandycove is indeed lovely (in case that angry guy is reading), emigration is one big, rather frightening way of learning that we are resilient and capable of change, and there is something profoundly comforting in that. Sign up to The Irish Times Abroad newsletter for Irish-connected people around the world. Here you'll find readers' stories of their lives overseas, plus news, business, sports, opinion, culture and lifestyle journalism relevant to Irish people around the world If you live overseas and would like to share your experience with Irish Times Abroad, you can use the form below, or email abroad@ with a little information about you and what you do. Thank you
