Out of the West
An Coinneal is the oldest parish magazine in Ireland, having appeared regularly since 1959, and continues to provide insight into life in Kilgeever Parish in Co. Mayo, Ireland. Written in 2015, the following piece was published in 2016 edition.
Driving in the Irish countryside from the Shannon airport to my Nana’s house three hours away, I watch the sunrise slowly peek out over the fields of the west of Ireland. Everything is green and growing, despite the fact that is nearly Christmas. The drizzle leaves droplets against my window that I lean against and try to catch up on the sleep I did not get on the plane ride over from Boston. My dad is in the driver’s seat with my uncle next to him, making their way back home on the roads they have known since they were young boys growing up together in the rural areas of County Galway. The radio is turned on and once again the reporter returns to the subject of the economy, a topic that still bring great concerns to all living in the country along with others who are outside of their home country, including my mother and father.
Ask me ten years ago about what Ireland is like and I would have a vastly different answer than what I do now. Back in elementary school, when my classmates would ask me if people still lived in thatch roof cottages and did not speak English, I would proudly tell them about how modern the country was, how people lived so efficiently with small cars but big houses, how engineering and science industries were growing, and how all my cousins were much more trendy than any of the kids I knew in America. In full roar was the Celtic Tiger, the title given to the period of time in Ireland beginning in the mid-1990s when an economic boom of major proportions lifted the island nation into great wealth. After decades of being a country devoted to simple life and having an economy primarily based on tourism, it had seemed that Ireland had finally emerged as the breakout star of the European continent. It was a prosperous time, and during it many emigrants capitalized on the success of their homeland and moved back, finally reunited with their loved ones while maintaining financial stability. My family was just such one. We had hoped on leaving America after I finished sixth grade, with my mom flying over for an interview as a nurse in Galway City and my dad planning on building us a new house right beside my Nana’s. However, my mom did not get the job and we had to put off the transcontinental journey a little bit longer, until perhaps after I finished seventh grade.
Just months after we made the decision to delay our move, the 2008 Recession hit.
In America, we can all remember how tense the country felt day after the day as stocks plummeted, debts went unpaid, and unemployment percentages rose. I may have only been twelve years old at the time, but I felt it too; I can still remember one of my classmates nervously raising her hand and asking the teacher, “Are we going to have another Great Depression?” My father was (and still is) a self-employed painter and although it was amazing to spend week after week during the summer with him, I could not help but worry that he was getting too little work and that is why he was spending so much time with me and my sisters. The economic downturn rocked America, but like a passenger liner ship it had an infrastructure large enough to at least somewhat hold its own against the storm.
Ireland was a small boat against the hurricane. It came to light that a lot of the businesses that had been built up during the boom were depending on borrowed money which they could not pay back. One after the other, banks began to close their doors. Homes constructed during the housing boom were left empty and unloved, littered across the country side. Emigration was on the rise again; we knew of one Irish-American family from the Boston area who moved back to the home country in 2007 only to return to the States a little more than a year after the bust. So many people told us we were so lucky not to have gone back, and we all thought that my mom not getting that job in the Galway City hospital was a blessing in disguise. She probably would have lost it months later if she had gotten the offer. The summer after seventh grade, my mom was helping me pack my suitcase for my month long stay with my family in Ireland when, after checking that I had my wallet in my bag, told me, “Make sure you hold onto this very tight. It has changed over there, it’s very likely that someone will pickpocket you.”
It was the winter of 2014 when I last visited Ireland, fresh out of my first semester of college. For the three weeks of vacation I spent a lot of time in the car, traveling around the country to visit old friends and family. It seemed like every house we visited had three things in common: first, the host would offer us a drink or a cup of tea, second, he or she would comment on how long it had been since my dad left the country, and third, someone in the party mentioned the economy, particularly in the west of the country. The subject is always on table, no matter how young or old you are. My cousin even had a little ditty she had made up on the recession and how everyone was still stuck in the middle of it that she would sing during the long car rides.
Where my family is from has always been more agriculturally based, with Galway City being the only hub of modern ingenuity. The rest of the area is graced with idyllic scenery. Fields abound with cattle, horses, and sheep dotting the green background. Along the sea coast are breathtaking sandy beaches pushed right up against mountainsides. Everything is so quiet and serene. Too quiet, my dad said one day. It was never this quiet when he was younger. He was one of seven children, and in his village large families were everywhere, sons and daughters running around helping the animals, playing together, and going to school by making the hour walk every morning. Out of the eleven families that were in the village when my dad was growing up, six remain, with nearly all of them being older couples or grandparents residing on their own, the last child living in the village having gone to college just last year. This is the case in many communities. In my mom’s hometown, just six children were in this year’s First Communion Class compared to the twelve or so that were in my mother’s. The initial numbers from my parents’ times may not astound anyone, but when you put it in percentages, half the children are gone.
Emigration has been a constant theme throughout Ireland’s history; just take a look at how many people in America on Saint Patrick’s Day proudly (and drunkenly) boast of how their great-great-great-grandmother came over on a ship to seek a new life and you can get a pretty clear view of how widespread the Irish diaspora is. For a time being, up until 2008, the rates of people moving to the country were finally higher than people leaving it, with many of these immigrants being Irish nationals moving back home.
In 2008, emigration was at 13.1% for the nation. In 2013, it had escalated to 50.9%. In no way is this loss not noticeable and the towns and cities in the west of the country have been devastated by this population loss. With very few resources and job opportunities left in the region, many have begun to move either to Dublin in the east or out of the country entirely. Many of the men commute to England, living there during the week and taking advantage of cheap airfares by coming back home every two weekends or so to see their wives and children. Millennials have had it the toughest of all; after going to school during a time of prosperity, they are now entering a workforce that has no place for them.
Two of my cousins have lived in the outback during summers just to make money as more and more Australian farmers seek Irish men to help with livestock. Another one of my cousins graduated with a degree in engineering, finding work for an American company that had a plant in Ireland and had to live in Arizona for a month and may need to come back again. Another distant relative got his degree from University of Ireland Galway and then moved to Boston a week later and got a job here instead. As the east of Ireland has continued to build up around Dublin and fortify its developments, the west of Ireland is left with hardly anyone to invest in it.
This is a country that once bubbled with promise but now feels a little stuck between a rock and a hard place. The youngest generation is looking for a way out and the older generation is even encouraging it-- when asking my little cousins what they wanted to be when they grew up, my grandfather proudly smiled and said that he believed that one of them would go and be a nurse in America just like my mom and aunt did. It is a recurring theme, the disparity between those who were born in the beginning half the twentieth century and those who were born in the latter. But if Ireland were to give their trust and faith to these kids and take care of their future, the country would bloom. My other cousin, of her own accord, turned to me and said that she was going to move into the countryside and become a primary school teacher. She was going to stay. Many people do not have this same amount of faith in the west, believing that the region will never again regain the vivacity it once had. When shopping for groceries in town, it’s hard not to notice the many blank storefronts. When going to the pub on the weekend, the place is nearly empty.
It is strange being Irish-American, being on the outside looking in at the issues of the economy and emigration in my parents’ home country, problems that a lot of nationals probably don’t think I should have a voice on. But I too hope for an Ireland that will bloom and prosper for decades to come, that can become a defining presence on the European continent, that will create more than just a holiday in America where everyone gets drunk and wears all green. I want an Ireland whose cultural music isn’t all sad and about people leaving home, that is not just a tourist destination, that can adequately provide for its people.
I may be Boston-bred, but I have a piece of me in that rainy weather that I will leave there forever.
Ask me ten years ago about what Ireland is like and I would have a vastly different answer than what I do now. Back in elementary school, when my classmates would ask me if people still lived in thatch roof cottages and did not speak English, I would proudly tell them about how modern the country was, how people lived so efficiently with small cars but big houses, how engineering and science industries were growing, and how all my cousins were much more trendy than any of the kids I knew in America. In full roar was the Celtic Tiger, the title given to the period of time in Ireland beginning in the mid-1990s when an economic boom of major proportions lifted the island nation into great wealth. After decades of being a country devoted to simple life and having an economy primarily based on tourism, it had seemed that Ireland had finally emerged as the breakout star of the European continent. It was a prosperous time, and during it many emigrants capitalized on the success of their homeland and moved back, finally reunited with their loved ones while maintaining financial stability. My family was just such one. We had hoped on leaving America after I finished sixth grade, with my mom flying over for an interview as a nurse in Galway City and my dad planning on building us a new house right beside my Nana’s. However, my mom did not get the job and we had to put off the transcontinental journey a little bit longer, until perhaps after I finished seventh grade.
Just months after we made the decision to delay our move, the 2008 Recession hit.
In America, we can all remember how tense the country felt day after the day as stocks plummeted, debts went unpaid, and unemployment percentages rose. I may have only been twelve years old at the time, but I felt it too; I can still remember one of my classmates nervously raising her hand and asking the teacher, “Are we going to have another Great Depression?” My father was (and still is) a self-employed painter and although it was amazing to spend week after week during the summer with him, I could not help but worry that he was getting too little work and that is why he was spending so much time with me and my sisters. The economic downturn rocked America, but like a passenger liner ship it had an infrastructure large enough to at least somewhat hold its own against the storm.
Ireland was a small boat against the hurricane. It came to light that a lot of the businesses that had been built up during the boom were depending on borrowed money which they could not pay back. One after the other, banks began to close their doors. Homes constructed during the housing boom were left empty and unloved, littered across the country side. Emigration was on the rise again; we knew of one Irish-American family from the Boston area who moved back to the home country in 2007 only to return to the States a little more than a year after the bust. So many people told us we were so lucky not to have gone back, and we all thought that my mom not getting that job in the Galway City hospital was a blessing in disguise. She probably would have lost it months later if she had gotten the offer. The summer after seventh grade, my mom was helping me pack my suitcase for my month long stay with my family in Ireland when, after checking that I had my wallet in my bag, told me, “Make sure you hold onto this very tight. It has changed over there, it’s very likely that someone will pickpocket you.”
It was the winter of 2014 when I last visited Ireland, fresh out of my first semester of college. For the three weeks of vacation I spent a lot of time in the car, traveling around the country to visit old friends and family. It seemed like every house we visited had three things in common: first, the host would offer us a drink or a cup of tea, second, he or she would comment on how long it had been since my dad left the country, and third, someone in the party mentioned the economy, particularly in the west of the country. The subject is always on table, no matter how young or old you are. My cousin even had a little ditty she had made up on the recession and how everyone was still stuck in the middle of it that she would sing during the long car rides.
Where my family is from has always been more agriculturally based, with Galway City being the only hub of modern ingenuity. The rest of the area is graced with idyllic scenery. Fields abound with cattle, horses, and sheep dotting the green background. Along the sea coast are breathtaking sandy beaches pushed right up against mountainsides. Everything is so quiet and serene. Too quiet, my dad said one day. It was never this quiet when he was younger. He was one of seven children, and in his village large families were everywhere, sons and daughters running around helping the animals, playing together, and going to school by making the hour walk every morning. Out of the eleven families that were in the village when my dad was growing up, six remain, with nearly all of them being older couples or grandparents residing on their own, the last child living in the village having gone to college just last year. This is the case in many communities. In my mom’s hometown, just six children were in this year’s First Communion Class compared to the twelve or so that were in my mother’s. The initial numbers from my parents’ times may not astound anyone, but when you put it in percentages, half the children are gone.
Emigration has been a constant theme throughout Ireland’s history; just take a look at how many people in America on Saint Patrick’s Day proudly (and drunkenly) boast of how their great-great-great-grandmother came over on a ship to seek a new life and you can get a pretty clear view of how widespread the Irish diaspora is. For a time being, up until 2008, the rates of people moving to the country were finally higher than people leaving it, with many of these immigrants being Irish nationals moving back home.
In 2008, emigration was at 13.1% for the nation. In 2013, it had escalated to 50.9%. In no way is this loss not noticeable and the towns and cities in the west of the country have been devastated by this population loss. With very few resources and job opportunities left in the region, many have begun to move either to Dublin in the east or out of the country entirely. Many of the men commute to England, living there during the week and taking advantage of cheap airfares by coming back home every two weekends or so to see their wives and children. Millennials have had it the toughest of all; after going to school during a time of prosperity, they are now entering a workforce that has no place for them.
Two of my cousins have lived in the outback during summers just to make money as more and more Australian farmers seek Irish men to help with livestock. Another one of my cousins graduated with a degree in engineering, finding work for an American company that had a plant in Ireland and had to live in Arizona for a month and may need to come back again. Another distant relative got his degree from University of Ireland Galway and then moved to Boston a week later and got a job here instead. As the east of Ireland has continued to build up around Dublin and fortify its developments, the west of Ireland is left with hardly anyone to invest in it.
This is a country that once bubbled with promise but now feels a little stuck between a rock and a hard place. The youngest generation is looking for a way out and the older generation is even encouraging it-- when asking my little cousins what they wanted to be when they grew up, my grandfather proudly smiled and said that he believed that one of them would go and be a nurse in America just like my mom and aunt did. It is a recurring theme, the disparity between those who were born in the beginning half the twentieth century and those who were born in the latter. But if Ireland were to give their trust and faith to these kids and take care of their future, the country would bloom. My other cousin, of her own accord, turned to me and said that she was going to move into the countryside and become a primary school teacher. She was going to stay. Many people do not have this same amount of faith in the west, believing that the region will never again regain the vivacity it once had. When shopping for groceries in town, it’s hard not to notice the many blank storefronts. When going to the pub on the weekend, the place is nearly empty.
It is strange being Irish-American, being on the outside looking in at the issues of the economy and emigration in my parents’ home country, problems that a lot of nationals probably don’t think I should have a voice on. But I too hope for an Ireland that will bloom and prosper for decades to come, that can become a defining presence on the European continent, that will create more than just a holiday in America where everyone gets drunk and wears all green. I want an Ireland whose cultural music isn’t all sad and about people leaving home, that is not just a tourist destination, that can adequately provide for its people.
I may be Boston-bred, but I have a piece of me in that rainy weather that I will leave there forever.
The mountain landscape that surrounds my mother's birthplace of Co. Mayo, Ireland.
