It’s an Irish problem for an Irish solution.
Net migration has clung comfortably to positive territory since 2015, and yet more Irish people departed these shores last year than returned. Why go if we’re supposedly winning?
People want to see the world, seek higher wages, cultural exploration, romance and adventure on the high seas and, perhaps, free themselves of this island’s obsession with school ties, postcodes and kitchen renovations. Some get out of dodge because they have simply had enough.
I was one of those who decided that Dublin had gone to the dogs. While I stood in front of Trinity College waiting for a bus, a year before I emigrated, some thugs tried to grab my bicycle. I held on to it.
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One of them took off his shirt – because, I presume, he saw western movies where cowboys took off their jackets before a gunfight – and after jumping around in a kind of pre-fight dance, he punched me. POW! Enough was enough. It was time to go.
And so, in 2011, 10 years after I had already returned from London, I packed up and moved to New York. The US obviously has its own problems: gun control, not least among them. But I didn’t regret going. Still, shortly before the last US presidential election, I decided to return.
Odd as it seems, the reasons I came back were the same reasons I left: one man’s parochialism is the same man’s community spirit, if viewed from a different vantage point in your life.
Street violence persists, as an attack on an Indian man recently beaten in Tallaght could attest. But Garda figures say “crimes against the person” fell on the year in the first quarter, despite Fox News reports to the contrary.
There were 17,709 drug-related offences in 2011, the year I left, versus 16,119 last year; hardly a remarkable decline, even if the population increased over that time. Gardaí seized 2,150 knives last year. That may – or may not – put your mind at ease.
[ An answer to Ireland’s housing crisis is right behind usOpens in new window ]
Ireland is the land of saints, scoundrels and status quo. Not an awful lot seems to change. As centre-right political parties play musical chairs with the office of Taoiseach, so much stays the same.
The housing crisis merely went full circle. Here’s a headline from The Irish Times in 2011: “Recession takes its toll on sport of kings and property developers.” And from 2025: “Ireland is overdependent on apartment development.” Two sides of the same coin.
Social progress happens reluctantly, begrudgingly. The vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment and legalise abortion under certain circumstances in 2018 was, five years later, followed by then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s comments to mná na hÉireann, saying he would like to see women have fewer abortions. How galling that a request by a man to curtail a woman’s freedoms was aired by Ireland’s first openly-gay Taoiseach. Was it surprising though? Sadly, no.
How many TDs actively canvassed for marriage equality in 2015? At the time, one Fianna Fáil delegate at the party’s ardfheis attributed the momentum behind the referendum to “global corporations in the IT industry” rather than a desire for equality.
Another Fianna Fáil politician resigned from her party over what she regarded as a lack of support within the ranks. That once-in-a-lifetime referendum was a grassroots affair; many lawmakers only hesitantly sauntered aboard later.
The Irish hospital system has been described as “dysfunctional,” as people continued to languish on trolleys in recent years. Having recently experienced our public hospitals, I am forever indebted to Indian and Filipino nurses. The biggest noticeable change since I left: immigrants now account for almost one in five of the workforce. And yet research suggests non-Irish workers are paid less and spend a larger portion of their income on housing than Irish-born workers.
If leaving is part of our national tradition, what brings us back? Family, familiarity and cultural connectedness. In New York, the person I talked to most in my neighbourhood was my Kosovar doorman. People tended to keep to themselves.
I moved to a house in a Dublin suburb a month ago, and have already met half a dozen neighbours. Also, New Yorkers don’t pop in for a cup of tea on their way home from the shops or the Forty Foot like Irish people do.
It’s hard to see Ireland through shamrock-tinted glasses. Economic growth makes it easy to pretend that social progress continues apace.
Just like the Celtic Tiger, the inequality gap is widening. Politicians here debate the same problems: education, housing affordability, children in poverty, homelessness and overburdened hospitals. All of these problems abide. Irish politicians rarely seem to act until the winds of change are already blowing their way.
In 2025, it’s hard to know where the obsession with money and status begins and entrepreneurship ends.
Here’s a snippet of conversation I recently overheard between two guys on Shelbourne Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin: “Just get them through the door and monetise them.” A bitter bookend to that conversation: a report concluding that the number of families with children walking through the doors of homeless accommodation has increased nearly six-fold over the last 10 years.
Why not go back to United States then? Because the most valuable quality possessed by the Irish people has, thankfully, not changed. Ireland, for the most part, has always tried to stand on the right side of history. President Michael D Higgins’ recent call for “immediate multilateral action” on Israel’s destruction of Gaza and condemning Hamas is exactly what our head of state should be doing. For this emigrant, it helped to act as a siren call home.
Last summer, in a New York restaurant, I got talking to an elderly couple whose parents survived the Holocaust. They spoke affectionately of their grandchildren. The conversation turned to Gaza. Politics aside, I said, I think we can all agree that killing babies is wrong. They said Palestinian children would only grow up to be terrorists. The earth shifted beneath me. I stood up, and walked away. I did not know how far I would walk. Or maybe I did.
Months later, like so many other returning Irish emigrants, I was gazing out of a window of an Aer Lingus plane descending into Dublin Airport, feeling grateful that – unlike the citizens of Gaza and Ukraine – I have a place called home to return to.
I’m ready for the laughter, the camaraderie and, yes, the begrudgery. So much seems to have changed, especially with all our pimped-out houses with imposing electric gates, and yet so much here remains the same.
