What would Ireland be like if mass emigration never happened?

dd972

Supposing the exodus during the famine years never happened or nobody went en masse to the UK like they did up to the 80's, what would Ireland be like in terms of it's population or society?

im invisible

we'd have people to fill the ghost estates in longford, maybe even leitrim

tac foley

Found this - bearing in mind that many of our neighbours in rural Ontario have Irish family connections...

Irish Canadians are immigrants and descendants of immigrants who originated in Ireland. 1.2 million Irish immigrants arrived, 1825 to 1970, at least half of those in the period from 1831–1850. By 1867, they were the second largest ethnic group (after the French), and comprised 24% of Canada's population. The 1931 national census counted 1,230,000 Canadians of Irish descent, half of whom lived in Ontario. About one-third were Catholic in 1931 and two-thirds Protestants.

The Irish immigrants were largely Protestant before the famine years of the 1840s, when the Catholics arrived in large numbers. However, most Catholic Irish after 1850 usually headed to the U.S., England and Australia.

The 2006 census by Statistics Canada, Canada's Official Statistical office revealed that the Irish were the 4th largest ethnic group with 4,354,000 Canadians with full or partial Irish descent or 14% of the country's total population. This was a large and significant increase of 531,495 since the 2001 census, which counted 3,823,000 respondents quoting Irish ethnicity.

tac

belcampprisoner

you would have 40 million people,

gobnaitolunacy

We would have had emigration anyway, but in a more gradual manner.

The country couldn't have supported masses of people unless they had something to live off of.

corktina

graveyards would be bigger

jonniebgood1

We have previously discussed counterfactual history threads on this forum and the consensus was that they do serve a useful function in opening up discussions that bring real history into question. However when this is not occurring that function is removed. In this case the thread is closed as it does not generate that discussion. This can be queried by PM if anyone feels that they can direct the thread back towards history rather than speculative opinion.

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