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Certificate of Irish Heritage coming… soon?

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

The government issued an update on the Certificates of Irish Heritage. The certificate is intended for those who are not citizens but who would like official recognition of their Irish affinity. The initiative was announced in June 2010 by Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, who said at the time that the first recipients would be getting their certificates by the end of last year.

It’s emerged now that the contract for the project hasn’t been signed, although the company chosen for the project, Fexco, was announced several months ago. Current Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore gave an update through a written answer to a Dáil question. Here’s the exchange (via kildarestreet.com):

Will Kenny nominate a diaspora senator?

Monday, May 9th, 2011

There has been speculation that Taoiseach Enda Kenny might choose  a representative of the diaspora to serve in the Seanad. Reports say that he will be making the announcement of his chosen representatives this week, but he has so far made no comment on whether he was seriously considering the move.

The speculation is partly driven by a call from Senator Darragh O’Brien to do so. Earlier this month, he said:

“The global Irish community can play a significant role in Ireland’s economic recovery and should be given a national voice.  With 60 million people worldwide claiming Irish heritage and 40 million of those in the United States alone I think it is extremely important that the Taoiseach uses his upcoming appointments to the Seanad to nominate a representative of the Irish Diaspora.”

“This is something Mr. Kenny himself has called for in the past and he is now in a unique position to deliver it.  Fianna Fáil will support such a nomination and I believe many people across all parties would also be supportive of the move.”

This isn’t a new suggestion, but even this extremely modest form of political representation for emigrants has been a tough one for Irish politicians to take on. For example, the Seanad’s sub-committee on reform of the Seanad gave this rather lukewarm recommendation in their 2004 report:

The Sub-Committee is therefore of the view that the Taoiseach, when selecting his nominees for the Seanad, should include people who can represent the interests and perspectives of both emigrants and immigrants.

More importantly, Labour and Fine Gael, in their joint policy document, “Caring for the Irish Abroad”, published in 2006, said, “We support emigrant representation in Seanad Eireann for Irish communities overseas”. There is no corresponding commitment in their programme for government, however.

The idea has been reported with some enthusiasm in the Irish press abroad. For example New York’s Irish Echo gave the idea a broad welcome, but suggested it might not go far enough:

Taoiseach Enda Kenny, in New York this week, is poised to nominate 11 members of Seanad Eireann. It has been suggested that one of them be a representative from the diaspora. Kenny himself was proposing three Senate members representing the diaspora just a few years back so it will be interesting to see what happens.

Just one seems like a bit of a back hand to the global Irish economy. None at all would be seen by some as a kick in the transom.

The editorial asks who might be a likely candidate, then posits rather modestly,  “There are certainly a few possible contenders, one of them being the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform’s Ciaran Staunton.”

In fact, the Irish Echo’s editor, Ray O’Hanlon, had been widely tipped back in 2006 and 2007 to be the first diaspora senator (as I wrote at the time). Back then, O’Hanlon had been in talks with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to be an agreed candidate to replace Fine Gael Senator Jim Higgins who was to step down because of his role as MEP. Senator Higgins had said at the time he would be willing to resign if there could be an agreed candidate representing the diaspora. The deal was hinging on an agreement from Fianna Fail not to contest the seat in a by-election. I don’t know precisely what scuppered the plan, but it all came to naught, and Ireland’s diaspora remains unrepresented to this day.

Of course, the relevance of all this speculation may be rather short-lived, given the Government’s enthusiasm for abolishing the Seanad altogether. In any case, it’s disappointing to see how easy it is for Irish politicians to support diaspora representation when they are out of power, as Fine Gael/Labour did and Fianna Fail does now. Here’s hoping that the current Government will take the history-making first step toward incorporating diaspora voices into our political system.

Second Global Irish Economic Forum: Dublin Castle, 7-8 October, 2011

Saturday, May 7th, 2011

I’m a little late on this, but I wanted to note that Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore has announced the second Global Irish Economic Forum. It will be held on 7-8 October, 2011.

I’ll post up some more thoughts on this later, but in the meantime, here’s the press release from the Department of Foreign Affairs, issued 3 May:

The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Eamon Gilmore, T.D., announced today that the Government will host a second Global Irish Economic Forum in Dublin Castle on 7-8 October, 2011. The Tánaiste decided to proceed with holding the Forum this year given the important contribution it can make towards building Ireland’s reputation among the international Irish business community.

The primary purposes of the 2011 Forum will be to:

• Engage fully with the Irish Diaspora in developing Ireland’s global business and trade relations;
• Discuss face-to-face the Government’s  priorities for economic renewal with key members of the international business community;
• Strengthen ties with the Irish Diaspora as a key part of the Government’s efforts to restore Ireland’s international reputation abroad.

Speaking after today’s Government meeting during which the initiative was approved, Mr Gilmore said:

“The Government recognises the valuable role the global Irish can play in Ireland’s economic recovery.  This Forum will provide an opportunity for us to meet with key members of the Diaspora and to discuss our priorities for economic renewal, job creation and the restoration of Ireland’s reputation abroad.”

Invitations will issue shortly to members of the Global Irish Network, which was established after the first Global Irish Economic Forum held at Farmleigh House in September, 2009.  The Network now consists of over 300 of the most influential Irish and Irish-connected individuals abroad, all of whom have demonstrated a strong affiliation with Ireland and have a record of high achievement in international business or in assisting in the promotion of Ireland.

In addition to the Network members, a small number of senior Irish based individuals from the business and cultural worlds will be invited.  The Taoiseach, Tánaiste, Cabinet Ministers and senior representatives from Government Departments and State Agencies will also attend.

Referring to the important role played by the Global Irish Network, the Tánaiste noted:

“Based across 37 countries, Network members provide Ireland with an invaluable resource of international expertise from which we can draw as we work towards economic recovery.  In the year since its inception, members have worked closely with the Government and State Agencies in promoting Ireland’s economic, cultural and tourism messages in key markets.  The Network is an important partner in our ongoing efforts to restore our international reputation”.
“This Forum will be the first time the entire Network has come together and the Taoiseach and I are looking forward to welcoming them all to Dublin for a frank and intensive exchange of ideas”.

Social psychologist says emigrant vote issue won’t go away

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

A social psychologist has said that the changing nature of emigration means that Ireland is likely to come under increasing pressure to allow its emigrants to vote.

Dr Marc Scully completed his PhD thesis, “Discourses of Authenticity and National Identity among the Irish Diaspora in England”, in the Open University’s Psychology Department last year. He spoke last week at the second annual Conference on Social Psychology in Ireland (C-SPI) in the University of Limerick.

According to a UL press release, Dr Scully is now exploring how “his findings might apply to the emerging ‘third great wave’ of post-war emigrants now leaving for England and elsewhere.”

He believes that the changing nature of emigration is enabling a shift toward bi-located lives:

“There’s every indication that recent emigrants are, at least psychologically and in some cases practically, living in two countries simultaneously and are embracing this as an increasingly normal way of living.

This will have implications for the political aspirations of the Irish abroad:

Therefore, the calls for emigrant voting rights which were so prominent before the election are unlikely to go away, as advances in communications have allowed emigrants to continue to be part of the national conversation in ways that weren’t possible with previous generations – the emphasis placed on transnational knowledge and experiences by this cohort means that they will want to continue to have a say, and this will need to be addressed as an aspect of political reform.”

This calls to mind a recent experience I had, in which I spoke on a radio show about issues of emigrant voting rights and emigration. Another of the show’s guests, a rep from the London Irish Centre, made the point that he was not in favour of emigrant voting rights, believing that people should vote in the location where they worked and spent their everyday realities. He went on to suggest that there were few things sadder than some of the older people he’d met who had spent decades in England but had never adjusted to the fact.

I was a bit surprised by the way he connected the voting rights issue with the plight of disadvantaged Irish people who had been unable to settle in London and didn’t quite know how to respond. I’ve thought since that that was a particularly curious argument against emigrant voting rights: obviously the situation of 1950s and1960s-era emigrants caught in that kind of limbo between two cultures wasn’t caused by anything to do with emigrants having a vote – because, of course, they didn’t have a vote in Ireland then and still don’t now.

I don’t believe that Official Ireland’s explicit rejection of its own citizens’ right to the most basic act of participation in their home country did anything to help Irish people integrate into the UK or elsewhere – and in fact, I believe that if emigrants had maintained the right to vote we wouldn’t have waited until 2002 for a Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants – which signalled a new attitude in our approach to the Irish abroad with the words: “We owe much to our emigrants”.

The most vulnerable of our emigrants, who were enormously helpful to Ireland’s economic development when we needed them, were allowed to languish with little thought from our politicians until this century. They were far away, their remittances were useful, and our leaders were under little pressure to listen to either their needs or any nascent political aspirations among the Irish abroad.

Things are different now. We need our Irish abroad as much as ever, but as countries all over the world seek to engage their expats not only economically but politically as well, we need to realise that we can’t expect the relationship to flourish if we’re not listening to them. We need to pay attention to Dr Scully’s assertion that the new kinds of transnational navigation being practiced by our young emigrants today will make them increasingly hard to ignore. We should be embracing this, and welcome this increased engagement as healthier for everyone.

Related link:
Marc Scully’s page on the Open University website.

High unemployment suggests lower emigration, says BOI

Monday, April 11th, 2011

The Bank of Ireland has revised its economic forecast to reflect a gloomier situation than it had previously predicated.

The Bank’s latest quarterly economic outlook says that the economy will grow by 0.5% in 2011, down from the 1.5% growth rate it had previously predicted.

The Irish Examiner reports this downward revision comes following the emergence of what the BOI report described as “two surprising and unwelcome” economic trends:

“The first was that the unemployment rate over the past six months has been much higher than previously published, on the basis that the labour force stopped falling in the final quarter of 2010,” commented Bank of Ireland chief economist Dan McLaughlin, author of the report.

The bank said that this implies that the scale of net emigration “is much lower than previously thought”.

The unemployment rate in 2011 is now expected to average 14.4% from 13.6% last year, although it has probably peaked in recent months, BOI said.

Notre Dame setting up Irish oral history archive

Friday, April 8th, 2011

The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana is working on an online database of Irish oral history that will allow users to upload their stories themselves.

The project, headed by Deb Rotman, the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Anthropology, is aimed particularly at capturing tales from the generation of immigrants who lived through the Irish Civil War and in early twentieth-century America.

“Those generations have some really great stories that we’re trying to capture, but we can only do so much,” says Rotman in a press release from the university. The project will allow immigrants to upload their own experiences using audio, text, photos and possibly video.

The project is linked in with the university’s archaeological and anthropological exploration of Michigan’s Beaver Island, which was inhabited in the 19th century by a group of Irish people largely from the Donegal island of Árainn Mhór. In Beaver Island, they created a farming lifestyle similar to the one they’d left behind – so in studying this community, students are gaining an insight into a rural immigrant experience, unlike the more frequently studied urban Irish experience in the US.

“The archaeological record and the historic documents work together telling different parts of the same story,” says Rotman, “and oral history is the third leg of that stool.”

As an alumnus of Notre Dame, I’m pleased to see such innovative Irish projects coming from there – particularly as I attended back in the dark ages, even before there was an Irish Studies option! The University now has one of the highest-profile Irish Studies programmes in the world.

Read the press release on the Notre Dame website.

Meanwhile, I’ve updated my GlobalIrish.ie list of Irish oral history projects. Am I missing any? Let me know!

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