One of the great tragedies of the past decade has been the fact that 133,800 native Irish left Ireland for the most part permanently, close to 3% of the population. This is such a big number; impacting communities all across the country in a disastrous way.
These are friends, relatives, people gone that are never coming back, and disproportionately young people as well, exacerbating the decline of rural Ireland further.
This is not discussed in art or music or literature these days. It also fed into the rotten start of FG getting into power in 2011. It's just swept under the rug. Never happened. Eh sure, we always went abroad.
As Ciaran Brennan discusses above as well, it's something that is coming back in light of the housing mess and the current state of the economy. Young people, zoomers, looking around, trying to contemplate the madness of the past two years.
