Richard Boyd Barrett Questions Global Ageing, Migration Benefits

Thanks, and I apologise if I wasn't here for your initial contributions. I've had to speak in the Dáil, but I've had a look through some of the ideas that you put across. I haven't had a chance to read it all, I have to be honest, but I've got some of the ideas. But I understand the basic problem is the population, the proportion of people who are dependent, because they're older, is growing, and that is going to cost more, particularly in terms of health, social welfare, pensions, and other things, so we have to address that issue. Can I ask, on a global level, because we do live in a sort of integrated world these days, there's, I don't know, 20 or 30 million people claiming Irish descent in America, and millions elsewhere. So on a global level, is this happening? I just want to know. In other words, do we have an older population everywhere in the world, or is it just here in Ireland? Because, obviously, I think some of your papers pointed to it. If we have young people migrating into this country, that can help address it. And is there any measurements, because, of course, it's become a very incendiary issue, and, personally, I think it's disgraceful, the targeting of migrants, when we were migrants all over the world, and people coming here are contributing, but is there measurements of the added value of migrants coming in? Not just to this country, but globally. Because, I mean, there's no doubt, you know, we all say it, and it's absolutely true, you know, the Irish helped build England, and they helped build America, and currently, people from Eastern Europe, and people from Africa, and people from Pakistan, and people from Brazil are building Ireland for us at the moment, right? And they're helping make it function. So, but is there measurements of that? Because I think it would be quite useful to have an evidence-based debate, an irrational debate about this, to show, because I am pretty certain that migrants into this country, and migrants into every country, bring in and add far more than they subtract. I'm sure that's the case, but I wonder, is it being measured? So, I'd just be interested to know. Okay, to your first point about, is this happening across the world, 55% of countries across the world now have total fertility rate, which is below replacement. The R number. Yeah, so 55% of countries are not replacing themselves, which means that, and the world's total fertility rate is now down to 2.3, the UN says. So, that means they're predicting that the population of the world will peak around 2060. So, we are competing across the world for a smaller, or we will be for a smaller cohort of migrants who are aged 20 to 30. Across Europe, we're one of the very few that are still growing. You know, we're in the minority. They're already facing depopulation. And we have, across the world, some countries who are, it's really quite severe. In Korea, the total fertility rate is now below one. So, that's all. It's not a very pleasant future that we're staring at if we don't take action now. There's lots of research about the value of migrants across Europe. I don't know any of it in Ireland. And you probably want to talk to the EM, European Migration Network, who's based in the ESRI, for actual references. But they show that high-skilled migrants bring a lot to the country. Low-skilled migrants are still positive contributors to the countries they migrate to. So, it's quite consistent, the evidence, in that area. If I could just supplement that slightly. I think the issues with the ageing population are very common across Europe and basically more developed countries. Her fertility rate tends to fall in countries where there's higher levels of income. So, most of the younger population of sort of the globe is coming from poor areas and particularly in Africa where fertility rates are still high. So, there's a sort of a shift in balance across the world in terms of the populations. The ageing population in Ireland, though, is very much in common with a lot of the other countries, certainly across Europe. In fact, we're somewhat, you know, younger overall than the rest of Europe, partly because our population, because of inward migration, has been growing more rapidly than in other countries in Europe. So, that's keeping us young. So, that's keeping us young. Essentially, migrants are more likely to be in the 20 to 40 age group, just as a very broad point. And that's pulling down. It's pushing against the ageing of the sort of the Irish population. And, yes, on the, you know, I don't think there's any specific research on Ireland yet. I think there may be some in progress on the overall fiscal contribution of migrants, but it's almost always positive. I would suggest it might be something for our committee to consider, is to actually quantify it, because I think it would help. I don't know if you'd agree with that. And I can't help but saying that, despite the population growth, which is significant that we're seeing, and which is actually a positive, if we're looking at this issue, we still have a lower population than we had in 1800. You know, significantly lower. And unless people subscribe to the view that the Great Hunger was a good thing, which, you know, there might be a few crazy people think it was a good thing, we still have a way to go just to get back to where we were 200 years ago, before what was actually a horrible campaign of starvation of the Irish people by a colonial power. But, I just thought I'd make that statement to kind of get, to get at the far right. Yeah, but the, one other thing, isn't, would you agree, because I certainly think it is, but I don't know if you'd agree, I mean, I know you talked about tax, that one of the elephants in the room in all of this is also the inequality in wealth distribution globally. Like, that if the cost of an older population, and us getting older is good, living longer, to my mind, is a good thing, it's a sign of progress in many regards, but that it becomes a problem because of the inequality in the distribution of wealth. To give one example in Ireland, a lot of people, young people, don't have bigger families because they can't afford the houses to put them in. If they could afford a bigger house, they'd probably have bigger families, and I suspect that's a feature in a lot of Western Europe, is, you know, if we redistributed the wealth, which is now increasingly concentrated in the hands of big corporations who pay very low levels of tax on a historical basis. You know, I mean, it's now 20%, 10%, 5%, 2%, whatever the figures are, effective, and all the rest of it, compared to, you know, in the post-war period, 50% or 60%, or 70% in some cases. If there was a bigger redistribution of wealth, we would have the money to provide housing, and bigger housing, so people might want to have more kids. Is that a reasonable argument? We actually have very little research on what's shaping fertility in Ireland, and it's one of the reasons that we make a big call in the paper for demographic research to be established in Ireland, both the data and the motivations about why people have babies, or why they don't have babies, or why they're delaying fertility. So we just, the evidence doesn't exist. But actually, education, the more educated women are, if you're looking across the globe, the less likely they are to want a large number of children. And the later they have their first child, the smaller their number of children, they go on. So it's fairly established, but we do need that research here. You know, what is driving it, and what is ensuring that women do not, whatever number of children a woman wants, what's interfering with her achieving that fertility? If she wants two children, why is she only having one? If she wants three, why is she only having two? And so on. That's, that's, we don't have sight of that for Ireland.