Key Points
- Like Australia, Ireland is also suffering a skills shortage.
- Opposition leader Mary Lou McDonald used her visit to Australia to call on the expat Irish community to return home.
Like many Irish tradespeople in Sydney, Mark Scanlon has become a hot commodity. After moving from County Cork - the largest and southernmost county of Ireland - four years ago, the plumber says he has always been able to find work.
"One phone call and you're in. Everybody knows everyone, the Irish community is very tight," he says.
Mr Scanlon works for Sydney business Proximity Plumbing. Despite an "extremely dire" labour shortage, it's struggling to keep up with soaring demand and has turned to hiring Irish workers as a reliable source of staff.
"Obviously, Irish people know other Irish people - which helps," the company's William Demirdonder says.
"We have got Mark currently employed with us, and I'm daily asking him for anyone he knows, anyone he sees at the pub."
Mark Scanlon and William Demirdonder from Sydney-based business Proximity Plumbing. Source: SBS News
"No way. You couldn't give it up," he says.
"The money you make over here compared to there is night and day. And [the] lifestyle - it's raining nine months of the year in Ireland whereas the sun is shining nine months here."
Ireland is losing young workers to Australia, despite a glut of work at home. According to the 2021 Census, 80,927 people in Australia were born in Ireland, a decrease of only 0.3 per cent compared with 2016 despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Irish is the third most common ancestry in Australia after English and Australian.
Many of those leaving the country blame unaffordable housing and soaring rent prices, despite the Irish government's new pledge to build 33,000 new homes each year until 2030 to combat the issue.
Ireland's opposition leader Mary Lou McDonald, who is visiting Australia this week, says while that may be too little, too late for some, she wants to encourage migrants that life in their homeland is worth returning to.
"I know that it's a mixed bag. It's a mixture of people who will not live anywhere other than Australia and this is their home," she said in an interview with SBS News this week.
"But there is a section of people who didn't want to leave in the first place, felt forced out of Ireland - and as much as they love Australia now, they want to go home."
Ireland’s Leader of the Opposition and Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald speaks to SBS News. Source: SBS News
"I feel it as a personal obligation that I ensure that they will have that choice, that chance, and yes, we will need them home for sure."
Ms McDonald told the National Press Club earlier this week she wasn't in Australia to act as a “snake charmer to lure tradies back to Ireland”.
“People will choose to live to work and to settle where it works for them and for their life ambition, and that’s great,” she said.
“I’m speaking more directly to a set of people that I know have the feeling that they were forced to leave that was not voluntary.”
Mary Lou McDonald at the National Press Club in Canberra this week. Source: AAP / MICK TSIKAS
“But I also know there’s another side to this story. The story of the frustration, the anger of many young Irish people who feel robbed of a life in Ireland.
“We will make Ireland the home that you deserve.”
We will make Ireland the home that you deserve.Mary Lou McDonald, Ireland’s Leader of the Opposition and Sinn Féin President
Ms McDonald has been leader of Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), since 2018 and has served as Opposition leader since 2020.
She led the party to its most successful outcome in the 2020 general election, securing more votes than any other party for the time time. But it ran too few candidates to emerge with the most seats.
The nationalist party won a historic victory at elections in Northern Ireland in May, in what it hailed a "defining moment" for the British-controlled region. The win gave Sinn Fein more power to pursue the party's ultimate objective of uniting Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to the south.
Sinn Fein was long shunned by the political establishment on both sides of the Irish border for its links to IRA violence during three decades of fighting over Northern Ireland's place within the United Kingdom that ended with a 1998 peace deal.
Since then, it has reinvented itself to become the most popular party in the Republic of Ireland, where it has carved out a successful base by campaigning on everyday issues such as the cost of living and healthcare.
While there are some Irish workers who wish to remain in Australia permanently, recruiters say many make the decision to return home after the end of their working holiday visas.
Kate Gormley from Alliance Nursing says this has always been the most frequent scenario.
"We encourage them not to lock themselves into one place. But they generally always want to go home," she said.
"That working holiday market always has that plan that they'll get those skills and then return home to better their careers back in their own country."
Mental health nurse Simon Nugent, 25, arrived in Sydney in March. Source: SBS News
"It's not fair for younger people who come here, and they do their two years' work and then they go home and they're struggling to find a place to live, and that shouldn't be the way for anyone, younger or not," he said.
"So, hopefully something comes of it."
Mr Nugent is hoping his outlook will have improved by the time his two-year visa expires.
- With Reuters.
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