It Worked For The Landlords

During the Great Famine, over one million people left Ireland. In many cases, the landlords paid their passage to America.

Starving, unemployed masses tend to agitate for reform so that they will no longer be starving or unemployed. Help them find what they're looking for elsewhere, and you're rid of a danger.

The failed Young Ireland movement proved that those without were tending towards armed insurrection. No government wants its citizens to consider taking up arms to gain the basics of existence.

Willie Penrose is quite right to say that modern emigration is easing the strain on the current Fianna Fail-led government. Rather than sit around Dublin and seethe, able-bodied university graduates are packing their bags and flying off to Australia or England or America, where they believe they have a better chance of finding something to earn a daily wage.

What's the government to do, asks Mr. Penrose, to put a stop to the Irish diaspora that never seems to end?

As a member of the Labour Party, he can't be happy with the first move that's been made. The minimum wage in Ireland has been dropped by one euro, to decrease one business expense in the hope of attracting other businesses looking for lower costs.

There's no money in the Exchequeuer, of course, to pay for any sort of government-backed schemes. Those were tried during the Famine days, with pointless road construction projects that provided wages for those who weren't already half dead with starvation, but did nothing to improve transportation.

It has to be up to private concerns to find reason to locate in Ireland, and the government is doing a fair job of promoting the well-educated, motivated workforce that's waiting for jobs to appear. It's up to the government to ensure that corporate taxes are kept low, in spite of Sarkozy's drive to get a higher, trans-EU rate approved.

In the end, there's not much the government can do but create the right environment, and that environment is pro-business, not pro-worker. Will Mr.Penrose applaud the government's efforts when jobs rise up from the earth, or will he be highly critical because those jobs are low-paying, low-benefit creations that enrich the employer more than the employee? At least the kids would be staying at home, right?