DUBLIN — Net emigration has returned to recession-ravaged Ireland for the first time since the Emerald Isle’s economy began to boom in 1995, according to government statistics released Tuesday.
Eastern European job-seekers who flooded into Ireland after the European Union’s expansion in 2004 are leading the way out, following Ireland’s rapid plunge into double-digit unemployment over the past year.
But the figures show that Irish nationals, particularly recent school graduates, also increasingly are looking overseas for work prospects — the brain drain that bedeviled Ireland from the Potato Famine of the 1840s until the 1990s.
The report said 65,100 people emigrated in the 12 months that ended in April. It was a 20- year high and 40 percent higher than the previous May 2007-April 2008 period.
