Hundreds at Limerick meeting to consider new life Down Under
WITH the local economy gone south, hundreds of young Limerick people are considering doing likewise after a USIT roadshow on moving to Australia drew a capacity crowd to the Savoy Hotel on Wednesday night.
Up to 300 people attended the event, a night after 1,800 were attracted to the roadshow in Cork. Labour leader Eamon Gilmore claimed in the Dail on Wednesday that one in three men aged between 21 and 24 was now on the dole. But the USIT roadshow also attracted plenty of middle-aged workers and a number of people from Africa and South and East Asia who have gone through the Irish immigration process only to find themselves jobless in Limerick.
Terry O'Donnell, a father-of-three from Shannon, said that he had been out of work since May and was now planning on emigrating with his family to Perth where he has relatives. And Australia, which didn't technically go into recession, is where jobs can be found.
"My brother-in-law is telling me he's very busy. Work is up the walls at the moment. I was made redundant in May. I was with Sifa (Schwarz Pharma] for four-and-a-half years. I have three kids, with a young fellow of six months and a dog," said Terry.
"I have been trying (to find work], but to be honest, any place I go, any factory I've been to, I've basically been laughed out the door. I actually saw one crowd put my CV straight into the bin. Most companies are letting people go so there's nothing doing at all. I am a qualified tiler and that's what I'm hoping to do once I get out there. I know a fellow who is looking for tilers and luckily enough he is interested in getting me over there."
Terry said Brian Cowen and Mary Coughlan should also look to Australia on how to run a country.
"They should take a lesson from the Australian government on how to handle a recession. They didn't even go into recession over there," he said.
Sharon Nolan, a UL graduate living in the city centre, has been looking into a move to Melbourne on a skilled work visa. She does have a job in the education sector in Limerick, but doesn't know for how long.
"I love what I am doing but the contract is up soon and I'm not sure they can afford to keep me on. I'm just exploring options. There isn't much around here at the moment. I would go with my boyfriend, possibly to Melbourne. I've just read up quite a lot on it. It's not Sydney, where you have thousands of other Irish people. It would be more of an Australian experience."
"The turnout tonight speaks for itself," said Sharon, "They (the Government) don't really seem to be doing much to keep people here and people are moving all the time. People are just going." One in three or four people under 25, they said today, are unemployed.”
Jimmy Richardson, who has a job as an aircraft mechanic in Shannon, was also thinking of moving to Western Australia for its quality of life.
And Caherdavin couple Alan Deere and Michelle Donnelly are considering USIT’s working holiday visa programme to travel and work. But they plan to return once the economy picks up.
“I have been working in a few places since graduation, but nothing serious,” said Michelle. “There isn’t much in the way of work going on with the recession, so we said we may as well go now while the country is in decline and come back when it’s shipshape again.”
USIT’s Limerick manager Grainne Danaher said this was “one of the busiest times” the agency had experienced in 50 years. The motivation for young Irish people moving to Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada was “most definitely” work rather than a spirit of adventure.
“What I would have found before was booking an awful lot of round-the-world tickets where people would hop and skip to say New York, San Francisco, Hawaii, New Zealand. Some are still doing that, but a lot are in a critical situation. They might stop in Thailand for a week and then they want to get straight into Australia and start working as soon as possible,” Ms Danaher said.
“Quite a few” out-of-work young professionals, including qualified lawyers and architects, attended the Savoy event. And there was manual work to be found, particularly associated with farming and the mining boom in Western Australia.
“They are so short in the agricultural sector that they will give you a sweetener for three months to work in agriculture or live in a rural area like Tasmania. They will give you an extra year on your visa to stay in Australia for up to two years. You could be pearl-diving off the coast of Western Australia or living in Adelaide because, again, that would be considered a rural environment and they need people to go to those areas for traditional strawberry, kiwi, banana and all types of soft fruit picking.”
Sue Harcus, an immigration officer with the government of Western Australia, said the country’s biggest ever mining project, Gordon Gas, was providing 10,000 jobs in construction alone. That state, Australia’s largest and with its lowest unemployment rate, was short of blocklayers, electricians, carpenters, engineers, doctors, dentists, chefs and much more besides. Ms Harcus invited four nurses in the crowd to talk about job opportunities that might be immediately available as soon as visas were arranged. She said Western Australia would be short 150,000 people for projects already planned for the next seven years.
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Tuesday 22 May 2012
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