Generation Emigration-The Captured Moments

Darkness has fallen over the city of Dublin, capital of our Emerald Isle. A young man sits on the wall outside his house. He gazes at the home in which he grew up, the front path dark but the comforting lights of the kitchen creating a warm glow in the garden. His mother moves around slowly inside, putting the dishes away after dinner. His father sits at the table, chatting animatedly to her.

The home he is now leaving for better prospects. But he doesn't gaze alone. Dublin photographer David Monahan captures the moment and saves it, to be presented as part of his Leaving Dublin photography collection.

It started as a simple request on Monahan's website. People who were in the last stages of planning emigration, leaving Ireland, would contact Monahan and he would capture their last moments in their home country before walking up the plane steps to a better future.

Pictures courtesy of David Monahan's blog (see link)

Monahan's blog has since attracted over 40,000 hits and he has taken almost 80 individual photographs of young adults, families, couples and students, all only days before they emigrate.

The photographs are dark, an eerie amalgam of darkness and light framing the subject, always accompanied by a battered suitcase-the recurring prop thoughout the photgraphs. He is capturing a new Irish culture - the culture and to emigrate.

The long queues at recent international job fairs should be warning signs enough that our country's youth have turned their back on Ireland's prospects. The "land of milk and honey" no more. Young adults are leaving the country to find work for a few years, optimistic that they can return to a vitalised Ireland in five or six years time. Families are taking the decision to move wholesale, not for a lifestyle choice, but to fend for themselves.

A lot of people speak of the flip-flop and barbeque lifestyle in Australia-how young people are looking for a bit of sunshine, a change of scenery. Be someone twenty-two or fifty-two, it is never an easy decision to leave home. Advantages and disadvantages are weighed. The prospect of earning good-worked for money is tempting. The thought of not seeing your family but for a crackling Skype screen for a year or more is frightening.

It is unnatural for parents to say goodbye to their children for so long. Opportunities, of course, should be grabbed with enthusiasm. But good employment opportunities used to be available on our front doorsteps. The notion of emigrating but for choice had not crossed anyone's minds in twenty years.

Pictures courtesy of David Monah's blog (see link)

Meanwhile, the Irish government squirm in discomfort. Ironically, a recent Fianna Fáil event, cue Micháel Martin's apology to the country for his party's actions, was held next door to a room that hosted a mile-long queue out the door and the opportunity to work abroad.

Recent developments in the entrepeneurial and job sector show no hope whatsoever. The decision to replace local enterprise boards with a central body and communication links through local authorities is going to be disastrous in its outcome. Aspiring entrepeneurs, the country's hope, should feel an affiliation with their enterprise board, have an opportunity to receive finance, mentoring, hands-on support. With the best will in the world this will not happen with a central enterprise board in Enterprise Ireland. Unless one is employing fifty tomorrow and importing millions next week they won't have any interest.

We thought all we needed was a change of government. A cure doesn't come about easily, we understand that, but the medicine should be immediate and effective-hitting the sectors it needs to. We were patient and now we're growing tired. Proper solutions are needed-our emigrants are not leaving for the chance to lie on a beach in December, they're leaving because they have to.