The Union of Students in Ireland is to stage a demonstration to highlight soaring levels of unemployment among graduates due to continued inaction by the Government

On Tuesday, August 3rd 2010, graduates of various professions and student leaders boarded the Jeanie Johnston famine ship located in the IFSC in Dublin?s docklands.

This demonstration was to illustrate that Ireland is now losing the future drivers of the smart economy, with thousands of valuable graduates having already left Irish shores and many thousands more preparing to follow suit.

{module Island Banners|xhtml} USI finds it ironic that the Jeanie Johnston famine ship is docked in the IFSC. This area was once the heart of Ireland's Celtic Tiger smart economy, with the Jeanie Johnson serving as a reminder of a past all but forgotten. Now, the 21st century equivalent of famine ships are taking another generation of Irish youth abroad as their own apathetic Government has failed them.

Gary Redmond, USI President, said:

?Figures from the Central Statistics Office for June 2010 stated that 91,646 people, under the age of 25, are unemployed. It is astonishing that this critical issue remains largely off the Government's radar. USI is not prepared to stand idly by while this Government oversees the loss of yet another generation of young Irish men and women.

We find it ironic that the party of De Valera, who steadfastly proclaimed ?no longer shall our children, like our cattle be brought up for export?, now stand at the quayside waving farewell to the masses of highly skilled graduates bound for distant shores, taking with them the future prosperity of this island.

The Government continues to pay lip service to ambitions of building a smart, knowledge-based economy. However, their silence on the issue of graduate unemployment is deafening and so it falls on USI to pick up the cause and ensure that another generation of Irish men and woman is not lost to distant shores.

Ireland has invested millions of Euro in order to create a workforce that is renowned across the globe for is expertise and innovative capacity. It is an act of economic madness to deny these graduates any opportunity to repay that investment by forcing them to emigrate.?









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