T’was the flight after Christmas

WHEN the campaign for the retention of Aer Lingus’ Shannon-Heathrow service was in full swing in 2007, no one expected that at the start of 2011 the flights would be used by streams of Irish emigrants.

At Shannon on Tuesday afternoon dozens of young quantity surveyors, teachers, engineers and carpenters queued for the flight, returning to jobs in Britain, having been home for Christmas.
Twenty six-year-old Billy Fitzgerald is a construction manager, now living in Clapham. He said he had little option but to leave Ireland.
“I finished college when I was 22 and worked on the Limerick tunnel for two and a half years. I went to Australia for a year, came home and worked in Portlaoise for six months and then went to England. There was nothing in my field any more. It’s not even worth looking, you’d have to change career path altogether to get work in Ireland.”
He says many more Irish have come to London over the last six months, which a burgeoning GAA scene reflects.
“It’s pretty good, it’s getting better the whole time and teams are getting stronger. There are more players; when I went first if you were able to walk you’d be on the team but there’s been a big change in the last year, it’s unbelievable. There’s a lot who’ve played inter-county there.”
He will eventually take over his father’s farm and says people will have to make sacrifices if they want to come home.
“A lot of people are trying Canada and I’ve heard great things about it but are you going to keep going places like that? If someone says the next place to be is Africa, will we all go there? The next thing you’ll be 40 and when are you ever going to get home? Eventually you have to bite the bullet, come home and hope it works out.”
Julian King from Ogonnelloe is also aged 26 and lives in Southampton. He is engaged to an English woman and says nearly everyone he went to college with has since left Ireland.
“I was in UL and I graduated and went straight over. I was in London for six months and got moved to Southampton to look after an office there. All of my class are gone, there’s none of them around. A few are in Dubai and most of them are in Australia.”
Seamus Richardson is part of the London hurling panel and was at the airport with his parents, George and Catherine.
He is working as a site engineer with an Irish-owned company and says he is happy enough in the English capital.
“It was tough at the start but I’m into it now and it’s grand. There’s about seven or eight who were in college with me there. There’s a few more in New York, a few in Australia, so there’s not many left at home.”
His mother Catherine said she was glad that her son could get work. “Our daughter is over there for two years and it could be a lot worse. They could be sitting on the couch and drawing the dole. They have jobs and London’s not that far away.”
Anne Billington left Ireland during a previous wave of emigration and says the increase in new arrivals is noticeable.
“A lot of people have been going over in the last year or so. There are a lot of Irish around Peckham but they go to all parts, wherever the work is.”
Ruth Scanlon has been in London for some time but would like to come back now. However, it’s not on the cards anytime soon.
“I’ve been in London for about ten years. I did hotel management in Shannon and I went over on a placement and stayed there. I’d love to come home but there’s no jobs, not the jobs I’d want to do. I love Ireland but I don’t see it being possible at all for the next five to ten years. It’s a completely changed country.”
Once reasonably plentiful, teaching jobs in Ireland have dried up over the last four years and Aisling Browne has spent that time in London.
“I’d definitely like to come back if there was a teaching job here but it probably won’t be for a few years.”
She says the number of Irish people of her own age in London has grown dramatically.
“All my school friends and a lot of the girls I went to college with have come over now, it’s between London, Australia and New Zealand.”