A Facebook page set-up earlier this week hitting out at Irish people who have emigrated abroad has understandably not gone down well in some quarters…
Given the stream of Irish people from this country having to leave in search of employment in recent years, emigration is a hot topic at present and something that has directly or indirectly affected almost every family in the country.
As a result, it is no surprise that a Facebook page set up seemingly with the sole purpose of criticising those who have had to leave these shores has raised the ire of many who have come across it on the social networking site in recent days.
Set up on January 7, the Ireland Abandoners page says that it is “for all those that left the Country when she needed you most you will not be welcomed back to reap the rewards of the crops we are sowing”.
The cover photo on the page (see above) is one of a pre All-Ireland Final gathering of Donegal people under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, with the line ‘Not Welcome Home’ splashed across it in big red print, while along with the numerous incendiary messages posted since the page was established on Monday are memes such as the one below comparing Ireland’s situation to the one in Greece at the moment.
All of the posts to date have attracted some pretty withering comments (one particular post has attracted just short of 1,400 comments at time of writing) from people at home and abroad, but rather than go into them in detail here, you can have a look at yourself on the page over here.
With only 544 likes so far, the page hasn’t yet built up a big following, but it has already attracted notoriety on Twitter, Facebook and on national radio, hardly a surprise when lines like ‘Take down your Tri Colours, you are not worthy of flying them and are not welcome back so stay where you are because the Irishness (sic) is better off without you!’ are included under the ‘About’ section.
The page could well be a deliberate attempt by a troll or trolls deliberately setting out to piss people off and if that was indeed their motive, they have certainly succeeded.
