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Notes -
Oh, it was a great loss. And the irony of it was that the IDA at the time was selling our young, educated (and cheaper to pay than the equivalent in your company, American multinationals) workforce as the reason to invest in Ireland - the Young Europeans campaign.
The irony, I say, is because people have stories of "As I was leaving for the airport to get on the plane to emigrate, I saw the Young Europeans billboards and I was one of the people in that photo":
Since the Famine (and before, but not as badly), we've been bleeding our young and our talented. The eldest son got the farm, the eldest daughter got the dowry, the rest of you look for work and that usually means emigration. Goes double if there is no farm or money to be inherited. My parents were the youngest of their respective families and the ones to stay at home; most of my father's siblings emigrated (three stayed behind besides him) and the same for my mother. My mother actually planned to go to America but her parents were elderly and she was left to look after them.
We can argue history, the Church, the economic climate, all the rest of it as to why this is so - but the brute force reality of Irish life was that you were likely to have to leave if you wanted work, any kind of work. And if you wanted to make anything of yourself, the opportunities are abroad. People are still contemplating that - the cost of living is too high, the salaries too low, no chance of buying a house. In the USA, that mostly means "move across the country". In Ireland, that means "emigrate".
"Starting a business" was another programme pushed by the government, with limited success. Capital was non-existent, as opposed to very scarce, unless you had some kind of influence or assets or pull to get loans. Ireland is not the US. There was (is) a cerrtain amount of political corruption which favoured certain people in their business dealings and enabled them to profit.
And when Irish entrepreneurs get successful, they leave the country - look at the Collisons. Part of that is if you want to grow, you have to go to the US, to Silicon Valley and the venture capitalists there. But also part of that is wanting to make money and advance in your field, and Ireland is just too small:
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