Bonnie, I agree. We have thousands of young Irish graduates and students in Liverpool. Many of them would have planned to move back in the long run but I think a lot of them are sitting tight for the time being and waiting to see what happens. Of course, the longer they do that the more likely they are to start careers and families and put down roots.

That influx of young Irish people hasn't done as much for Irish music in Liverpool as you might expect, with one or two notable exceptions. I think the last thing young people want to do when they move away from home is carry on doing the same thing they did when they were living with their parents. There certainly isn't much evidence of many of them wanting to spend a lot of their time involved with organisations that remind them of the society they left in the first place (and which has let them and their families down so badly).

Another thing is that the earlier generations of Irish people who came to England tended to come as young, single men and women, often straight from the family home with very little to their name except what they brought with them. Many of the people who are losing their jobs in Ireland now have kids in school and mortgages on properties that they can't sell so it's not as easy for them to just up sticks and leave. So yes, I think a lot of people are just hanging on grimly. For those who do leave, I don't think England is the magnet it once was in any case.