There is a compelling ring of justice about suggestions emanating from Mayo that the country should at last do something concrete to help long-term emigrants in Britain who yearn to return home for their final years.
The scale of the contribution made to the national economy by emigrants remittances in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s has been highlighted by former Mayo Person of the Year, Dr Seamus Caulfield. He has called for an imaginative and generous gesture by the State in this, the International Year of the Older Person.
Over two decades the emigrants sent back more than £300 million in small remittances to their families, money that not only kept the local economy ticking over in coastal areas from Kerry to Donegal, but also helped to keep the national debt in check.
With the national coffers now brimming over, Dr Caulfield suggests that in next December's Budget, the Government "should consider repaying a small part of this interest-free debt we have had for almost half a century".
Over five years, he proposes, an "Emigrants Remittances Fund" of about £13 million a year should be shared out between appropriate bodies in Ireland and Britain to help the surviving emigrants, whose health and social problems were described at a recent Mayo Association convention in Manchester.
He points out that the "Many Young Men of Twenty" celebrated in John B. Keane's powerful drama of emigration are the "now somewhat diminished in numbers Many Old Men of Sixty", of whom a certain number might, with limited assistance, manage to realise their dream of ending their days back home in Ireland.
Those emigrants of the 1950s and 1960s made an enormous contribution, both to the land of their birth and to the land they helped to rebuild after the second World War. Dr Caulfield notes that the annual accounts of Government up to 1970 clearly record the scale of the "Emigrants Remittances" sent home in single pounds, fivers and, occasionally, tenners.
In 1961, for instance, the £13.5 million recorded as Emigrants Remittances almost equalled the total cost of primary and second level education in the Republic (£14 million). By 1970 the contribution from emigrants had risen to more than £24 million.
Several other prominent Mayo figures have supported Dr Caulfield's proposal and added further ideas. Mr Paddy Moran, chairman of the Mayo Association in Dublin, suggested that a group of the older emigrants could be flown back to Knock airport on a fact-finding mission.
In Mulrany, Co Mayo, a practical project is already established which has enabled some longterm emigrants from the area to return.
The St Brendan's Village Project, a community housing and care initiative for the elderly founded by local GP Dr Jerry Cowley, has provided housing for several people who wished to return from unsuitable or difficult situations in Britain.
The village includes a "high-support" integrated unit with capacity for 30 elderly residents, and 16 houses which provide "low-support" shelter for those older people who are able to cater for themselves.
The project, involving about 25 staff directly as well as a FAS scheme, has become the biggest employer in the area and is based on the concept of reintegration of the elderly in their own community, says Dr Cowley. "The idea is that no matter how old you are there's a place for you in your local community."
He asserts that, nationally, the elderly are the forgotten people, the people with no voice and whom the system has failed. "When people can no longer cope by themselves in the community they have to go to a faraway place where they know nobody, and like the old Indian, they just lose heart and die.
"This is the alternative to that. Not alone do we keep people locally, but we've actually brought them back from institutions as well. If you have services locally you stop the vicious circle of depopulation and people will come and settle, so this is also a formula for rural regeneration."