Is the flow of migrants from eastern Europe to Ireland decreasing, asks Ruadhán MacCormaic, Migration Correspondent.
It doesn't make it any easier for Magda Pigos to remind herself that this has been the plan all along. The family have yet to set a date for their return to Poland, but it will be some time in the next 18 months - that much she knows. Their problem is, life in Ireland has turned out too well.
Magda and her husband Arek, now in their early 30s, were among the first Poles to come to Ireland when their country joined the European Union in 2004.
Back then, they had vague thoughts of spending a couple of years here and then heading south to Spain for a few years before going home, but before long, a fulfilling routine had imposed itself. Magda has a job she enjoys in a creche and Arek, a computer programmer, has never been out of work since they arrived. To complicate matters, their five-year-old son Tymoteusz has settled painlessly into school. Talk of leaving constantly comes up against thoughts of the set-up they have - the jobs, the friends and the familiarity on the one hand and, on the other, the stranger's thrill of constant encounters with the new, still undimmed after almost four years.
"We wanted to spend not more than three years in Ireland, but it's really hard when you know everything, you have a good job, a good school, good friends - it's very hard to change country. And we feel very good here," Magda says.
As with many emigrants, it has mainly been Tymoteusz, who in just over a year will be old enough to start primary school in Poland, who has kept their eyes trained on home.
"If it was just me and my husband, I don't think we'd be thinking of going home now, but if you have a child, the decision comes a bit quicker. He's happy here, but he asks me sometimes when are we going back to Poland," she says.
It's a question being posed more and more frequently. New figures released by the Department of Social and Family Affairs show that in 2007 almost 129,000 people from those countries that joined the EU since 2004 were issued with PPS numbers - a fall (when newly-joined Romania and Bulgaria are excluded) of more than 25,000 on 2006.
Suggesting a calming in the flow of new migrants from central and eastern Europe, a comparison across the last quarter reveals that the number of Poles being issued with PPS numbers fell by more than one-third in 2007. It may reflect a wider pattern: Fás estimates that net migration will decline from 72,000 in 2007 to 38,000 this year.
Fewer Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Czechs appear to be coming to Ireland, then, but there is also new evidence that appears to imply that more people are returning home. Analysing data on migration to Ireland in the year ending April 2007, figures published by the Central Statistics Office in December showed that Ireland's emigration rate was actually at the highest level since 1990. Based on figures from the quarterly national household survey, the CSO found that official emigration was at 42,000 in 2007, compared to 26,000 in 2004.
The biggest increase was among 25-44-year-olds, and while the large share of people moving beyond Britain, Europe and the United States (the 'rest of the world' category has more than doubled since 2002) probably owes much to middle-class twentysomethings playing out the "year in Australia" ritual, there is also a big rise - from 800 people in 2005 to 7,000 in 2007 - in people moving to the EU's 12 newest members.
We don't know their nationalities, but it's a fair assumption that some were returning home.
NOT THAT YOU'D notice it at the Polish Masses at St Audoen's church near Christchurch, Dublin, where the young congregation spills into the outer porch every Sunday morning, but many in the community have spotted the trend. The chaplaincy office used to field a lot of queries from intending immigrants, who would e-mail questions about life in Ireland, but in the past year, the inbox has been emptier than usual. "We noticed a few months ago that more people are going back than coming in," says Fr Piotr Galus, chaplain to the community in Cork.
Dr Jacek Rosa, deputy head of mission at the Polish embassy, senses the same pattern and suggests that while Ireland is still an attractive destination - overall, the number of Poles coming here remains quite high - the economic slowdown is leading to an easing of the immigrant flow.
"A lot of Poles tell me they'll stay here another year and a half, then they'll go back. The tendency is, the higher a person's education, the higher the probability to go back to Poland, because they have the possibility to develop," he says.
"Those who have low skills get paid less in Poland - a cleaner would earn €1 [ an hour] in Poland and €8 here."
For Danguole Tautvydiene, a Lithuanian textile designer who has been in Ireland with her husband since 2002, economics don't figure in her decision to return home next June. Originally, Danguole admits, she thought she'd never go back, but as the years passed, the subject slipped into the couple's conversations more frequently. "After four years, we started to think about going home. We left our families at home and we miss them." The couple have two sons - aged 5 and 10 - and although the kids are immersed in Irish ways outside the home, they speak their own language with their parents and attend the Lithuanian school on Saturdays. "It will be difficult for them, but I think it will turn out fine."
There are compelling reasons for Danguole and her compatriots to think seriously about returning home. In Lithuania, home to Ireland's third largest immigrant contingent after the UK and Poland, the unemployment rate is at four per cent and, when prime minister Gediminas Kirkilas visited Ireland last year, he spoke urgently of trying to lure his country's emigrants back. Danguole's husband works in construction: he's unlikely to be without work for long.
In Poland, the exodus of the young was used by the victorious Civic Platform during last year's parliamentary election as a stick with which to thrash the governing coalition, and with the economy's expanding waistline creating an appetite for infrastructure, it remains one of the political issues du jour.
Is it any surprise that when the Fás Opportunities exhibition opens at Croke Park later this month, Polish companies will be manning some of the stands? According to Dr Izabela Grabowska-Lusinska of the Centre for Migration Research at the University of Warsaw, one of the main reasons for the gentler flow of people from Poland to Ireland is that the "migration potential" (those with the propensity to emigrate) has been exhausted in the past year and a half. In other words, Poland is running out of people to send.
These people movements are also sensitive to shifting economic sands, and depreciation of the euro means that while the costs of emigration are still high, the relative pay-off has fallen. Combine this with rapid improvement in the Polish labour market - fed by shortages, economic growth, investment and the need to get its infrastructural house in order in time for Euro 2012, which Poland is co-hosting with Ukraine, and some of the reasons for Poles to leave start to ebb away.
The type of person who comes to Ireland - generally young, single and mobile - is important too. Because three-quarters of them don't have dependants, they are relieved of some of the burden of long-term planning. And with cheap flights making it feasible to commute for a few days at a time, stories abound of a new type of seasonal work that official figures would probably miss: for example, carpenters who live in Wroclaw coming to Dublin for a given job and returning once it's done.
ONE REASON IRELAND has received so many central and eastern European migrants since 2004 is that (along with only Sweden and the UK) it allowed the EU's newest citizens to work from day one. Since then, most other EU countries have relaxed their restrictions and the spectrum of choice has widened for aspiring migrants. Could if be that more people are opting for the Spanish sun or for reviving their spoken French?
Dr Jacqueline Hayden, a research associate at Trinity College and a specialist in east European politics, wouldn't discount the possibility, and believes Poles don't necessarily share the Irish monoglot tendency to seek out English. "I think there's an assumption in Ireland that everyone is going to love being here, but maybe that isn't the case, and that you won't necessarily have this phenomenon of people settling and staying forever," she adds.
While Aneta Oczki has noticed that more of her compatriots are leaving than arriving, the principal of the Polish primary school in Christchurch, Dublin, points out that the enrolment lists are swelling for her Saturday classes. The school now has 146 children on its books, with another 30 on the waiting list.
"Now is decision time. When they enrol their children, they tend to say, 'we're planning to go back to Poland after three to six years and that's why the children need the Polish education'. Or they're planning to stay here for good and they want their children to keep their Polish language. These people probably have a mortgage and are quite settled here."
That's not to say that those who profess an intention to return home will always act on it. The more Magda talks about her family's planned departure, the more she interrogates herself about what will await them, and what they'll be leaving behind.
"You know, everybody says 'we want to go back'. But each year, it's 'we'll stay one year longer'. And it's the same each year. I tell you, two years max. But I'm not sure that if you call me in a year's time, I won't be here. You never know."