Irish people, all aboard the Jeanie Johnston

Jeanie Johnston was a tall ship known for ferrying Irish emigrants from the South of Ireland to North America between 1848 and 1855. As the effects of the famine worsened, she made 16 trips from Ireland sailing to Quebec, Baltimore and New York.

Today the boat is a tourist attraction. It’s replica is docked on the quays in Dublin’s city centre and attracts thousands of tourists daily, all eager to find out about the horrors of the poverty and pain that enticed over one million people to leave Ireland.

At 10am today (August 3) Irish time, the Jeanie Johnston will be fully boarded, but not by tourists. Today, young Irish graduates will use the replica to stage a demonstration against the governments lack of concern for the amount of graduates being forced to leave in the country in search of work.

According to the Irish Economic and Social Research Institute, over 200,000 people may be forced to emigrate between now and 2015 if the issue is not addressed. Most of the affected are young graduates under 25. WEST spoke to one Irish graduate who is preparing to protest this morning; 24 year old Roísín O Grady.

WEST: What is your current situation?

R.O GRADY: At the moment, I’m doing an uppaidinternship. I’ve been doing it for three months so far and it lasts six.

WEST: What would be your ideal job at the moment?

R.O GRADY: I’d love to be working in the NGO sector, not sure what role really. Maybe research if it was a really good project, or communications and media.

WEST: If you are interning for free, how can you afford to live in Ireland, one of the most expensive countries in the EU?

R.O GRADY: Indeed, I am working for free and can only afford it because I’m living at home in my parents house. I don’t spend much and still get some money from my parents. I more or less feel like I have to work for free to get experience. I know a lot of people who graduated from my class who are doing the same. I don’t qualify for social welfare because I live at home and am under 25, so it’s means tested against my parents income.

WEST: So what will you do? You can’t work for free for ever?

R.O GRADY: I’m off to Canada in a few months. Mainly I’m going there because there are no work prospects here in Ireland. I want to travel and it’s an English speaking country. The working visa wasn’t hard to get either. I plan to work and travel while I’m there and hopefully stay for a year in total. I kind of feel obliged to leave. Mainly because the mood in Ireland is so negative and it’s frustrating as a young graduate who just wants to work and get experience to be surrounded by so much constant negativity about the economy.

WEST: Are you worried about your future and Ireland’s future?

R. O GRADY: Not worried really, just not sure if it’s a place I want to live right now. As I said, so much negativity can feel quite claustrophobic. It feels like we are very introspective and obsessed with our economic problems as a society, but still don’t seem to want to create a more equal society moving forward – just reiterating how terrible things our for ourselves individually and not learning from what has happened by trying to start again to build a better system for everyone.

WEST: How do you think the Irish government is dealing with the situation for young graduates?

R.O GRADY: The government is doing basically nothing as far as I can see. The embargo on hiring in the public service has meant that anyone from my class aiming to go into that profession have little opportunities. The ministers talk about ways to create employment and competition for the economy to grow, but I see very few initiatives to encourage young bright people to make a difference. It makes me angry to hear that ‘We spent recklessly during the boom years, so now we have to make cuts’, because I didn’t spend recklessly. I studied hard so that I could gain employment. But now people my age are paying the price. As far as I can see, the same logic of economic competitiveness and growth for the sake of growth, which got us into this situation, is being used to get us out of it. And it is being spouted by the same government who created bad policies in the first place. Only in Ireland could they not see that things need to change.