In the last of our emigration series, Helen Vaughan has travelled to one of Ireland’s biggest towns, where people talk about a ‘lost generation’.
Locals in Ballinasloe in Co Galway feel it’s one of towns worst hit by emigration, describing it as a ‘ghost town’ after all of the young people have gone.
Already this week we’ve heard mammies of the diaspora talk about making the journey home from Dublin airport after dropping one of their children off.
We’ve talked to grandparents who are watching their grandchildren grow up on Skype
Now our reporter, Helen Vaughan, has travelled to Ballinasloe, to get a snapshot of how people there are faring.
18 hurling players who emigrated from Co Tipperary are coming back at Christmas time to play against their former club.
The Gortnahoe Glengoole GAA Club lost an entire team over a few years, and one player Jim Ryan, who lives in Perth, decided it was time to invite everyone back to the club for a special game this Christmas.
The boys are coming from as far away as Hong Kong, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.
Helen Vaughan reports:
138 thousand emigrants have left Ireland over the last three years.
Emigration mostly focuses on those who leave and how they get on, but research from Trinity College Dublin has now looked at the impact on the families left behind.
It finds that it’s the mothers of emigrants that suffer the most, and it can have a negative impact on their mental health.
Helen Vaughan had tea with five mammies in Gortnahoe in Co. Tipperary to see how they’re doing:
The number of Irish people returning from abroad has almost halved in the past two years.
Around 11,600 Irish people moved 'home' this year, compared to nearly 21,000 in 2012.
In this second instalment in our ‘Emigrant Voices’ series, we're focusing on Irish who have now chosen to move back home.
Helen Vaughan has been speaking to some of them, starting with the Hogan family:
138 thousand Irish people have left the country over the past three years, emigrating to countries like Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and the UK.
This week on the national lunchtime news, we'Â’re touching base with some of those people to see why they left, if thereÂ’'s any chance they'Â’ll come home and what are the ties that bind them to Ireland?
In this report, Helen Vaughan spends some time with IrelandÂ’'s Facetime families:
