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It used to be that the Irish government counseled workers on how to emigrate, but now it's holding job fairs in Cologne and Prague to attract a target of 200,000 new entrants in the next five years. A main focus of recruiting is places like San Francisco and Boston and Birmingham, where Irish expatriates congregate. Over 40% of the new arrivals this year have been Irish returnees. Hobbs is one of them, an energetic 30-year-old who's the business development manager of piseog.com, which creates software to make purchasing over the Internet more precise and productive. The government has helped with a grant, business advisers and low-cost premises in a Limerick technology park, part of a policy to spread the new economy beyond Dublin.
Hobbs came back after seven years in Brussels and his colleagues include an Australian, two Irishmen returning from the U.S. and one from England. "The human effect of the good economy is that people have a lot more confidence here now," he says. "Enough to form their own companies and not just work for multinationals." The reverse exodus is also bountiful enough that its cream can be skimmed for profit. Katherine Grace and Martina Brady, both returnees themselves, recently opened a headhunting firm, WeinsummerGrace, that concentrates on plucking high-level Irish executives from abroad. "We find people who aren't looking to move and can offer them something better," says Grace.
The new Ireland flummoxes many returnees at first. They complain especially about high housing prices and a more hidebound business culture than they knew in Hong Kong or Wall Street. Several hundred members of a Returned Emigrants Network meet regularly to trade business cards and tales of awkward re-entry. But despite their frustrations, they also take pride in transferring new techniques and attitudes from abroad.
One success story is Mary Delargy, who after 15 years in the U.S. as a nurse, opened Ireland's first paint-your-own ceramics studio, called Hey Doodle Doodle, in Galway and then another branch in Dublin. "Our product isn't the pottery, it's creativity," she says. "Here, the biggest barrier is getting people to feel they can do it. But they are becoming more open to what we offer."
Father Livinus Oneybuchi is a particularly striking example of reverse brain drain. A Nigerian educated by Irish missionaries, he now hears confessions and celebrates Mass as an assistant priest at the Church of the Holy Name in Dublin, where homegrown priests are in short supply. "It is very interesting to experience the church from which we got our own faith," he says.
In Nigeria, sermons are long and exuberant and the confessional is often full 12 hours a day. In an increasingly secular Ireland, though, the sermons are short, the confessional not so busy and church attendance is dropping. "I think the celebration of the liturgy has perhaps become too sterile here," he says diplomatically, and suggests that systematic exchanges between Irish and foreign priests may help revitalize the mother church. Just as Oneybuchi is starting to spread new ideas, the influx of immigrants — plus the many Irish returning home from years abroad — is a revitalizing influence, giving people renewed faith in Ireland's future.
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