Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland
9 May 2013
Responding to the survey on youth unemployment and emigration by the National Youth Council of Ireland, the Communist Party of Ireland stated that it is not just the policies of the current and past Governments that have led to the constant haemorrhage of mass emigration of our youth but the economic system itself, which is incapable of creating enough jobs and proper economic and social development to meet the needs of our people.
Paul Doran stated that until there is a fundamental change of direction in the economic and social policy of this failed state we will continue to rear our children to walk the streets of cities around the globe. All economic and social development has been skewed in favour of transnational corporations and the Irish rich and powerful.
As the statistics show, this state has the highest net emigration since the late 1980s. Over the last four years 308,000 people have left, 41 per cent of them (125,000) in the 15–24 age group. In brief: —There is 31 per cent youth unemployment. —One in three young men under the age of twenty-five are now out of work. —Youth unemployment has trebled since 2008. —We have the fifth-highest rate of child poverty in Europe, with a poverty rate of 20 per cent.
Unless we break this cycle of dependence and control by the European Union, the United States and the British state in the North we will see further generations of our youth leave, looking for a future.
Emigration, like unemployment, is used as a weapon against the people to keep them subdued and cowed.
