DUBLIN More than 100,000 workers are expected to leave to find jobs before next year ends — a return to the emigration which used to be as much a part of the Irish experience as Gaelic games, a Catholic upbringing, or a reputation for the “Craic”.

One fixture of television coverage over Christmas and New Year used to be the scenes at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports as thousands of young Irish people said goodbye to loved ones after their seasonal break at home.

When the economy became the fastest growing in Europe the Irish diaspora headed home, to be followed by an influx of workers from countries such as Poland and Lithuania.

With the jobless rate now running at 13.6 per cent, for many Irish workers the only option once again is to look abroad.

When the Working Abroad Expo opens at Dublin's RDS conference centre there will be a surge of young, skilled and highly educated people seeking work and a new life elsewhere.

Exhibitors come from English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand where there are labour shortages.

Representatives of regional governments such as Western Australia or the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador will be in the Irish capital to persuade the brightest and best to their shores.

Even the republic's student travel company will be on hand to offer advice on visa applications and travel arrangements to those heading abroad.

Emigration has been increasing as the recession bites and the government prepares for more cuts to the public sector in a bid to drive down the huge national debt.

Last year migration to the United States increased by 12 per cent.

In the past emigration was regarded as a safety valve releasing thousands of mainly younger workers to find jobs in New York, London, Munich or Melbourne.

The union movement has warned that with the US crawling only slowly out of recession and Britain about to experience its own cost-cutting, that escape route may be soon closed off.

Peter Bunting, the Irish Congress of Trade Union's northern general secretary, said “The safety valve may be shut down, especially in Britain. A lot of Irish workers in the past got jobs in publicly-funded projects like building motorways, schools and hospitals.

“The manual labourers and semi-skilled workers from Ireland are the most vulnerable to an economic downturn at home, especially in the building trade; they are also the ones least likely to get a job if they emigrate to Britain for work, particularly once the Conservative/Lib Dem cuts start to really bite.”

The congress has even warned that, in the north and the south, there is a danger that the unskilled and semi-skilled unemployed, the sector least able to migrate, could become a new pool of disaffection that might be exploited by dissident Republican terrorists on either side of the Irish border.—Dawn/Guardian News Service