Now, children, a new word for you today. Write it down carefully. I'll say it clearly for you: DIASPORATION.

Diasporation is what happens in Ireland when we run out of ideas and money, and call on the people who left Ireland in earlier bad times: The Diaspora.

Diasporation is what happened this weekend in Farmleigh when the Global Irish Economic Forum debated how best to get the nation out of the hole it is in.

Auntie

Our property bubble has burst? We're losing jobs? The Budget's likely to cut the salaries of public service workers?

Tough. But the Global Forum has the solution: talk to our auntie in Chicago by email. In fact, we'll issue her a financial bond so she can support Irish enterprise. That'll solve all our problems, won't it? Well, no, actually, it won't. The Irish diaspora may not be a busted flush, but they're a weird lot.

A tiny number, like the splendid Loretta Brennan Glucksman of the Irish-American fund, care deeply about the country they or their ancestors came from and can always be relied on to support community or arts initiatives designed to create peace or prosperity in the old country.

The rest of the diaspora is a write-off and always has been. One of the best histories of the emigrant Irish makes the point that whereas Italians and other Europeans who, through poverty, had to emigrate to the United States always planned to get home as soon as they made a few bob, the Irish concentrated on singing miserable songs filled with homesickness while staying in Detroit or Dakota or downtown Manhattan.

They were the least likely of any of the immigrant nations to actually go home. And, while we've all heard the stories of envelopes coming to our great-grandparents with the few bob from the emigrant son or daughter allowing the folks at home to put in a toilet instead of visiting the local field, the fact is that a huge proportion of those who left used their emigration to break all ties with the folks at home.

But hold on, I hear you say, even if they don't come home, they represent a huge market, don't they? In theory, yes. In practice? Well, it's just amazing how few of those with Irish blood actually want to spend a holiday here. If even a fraction of the people who turn out in green wigs at their local Paddy's Day parade came back to Ireland for their holidays, we wouldn't need tourists from any other country. But they don't. They get all the sentimentality out of their system on Paddy's Day and take their holidays in Disneyland.

Nor are they a great market for Irish products. I couldn't begin to list the number of Irish entrepreneurs who have come to me for training before they head off on the American media tour plugging the product they just KNOW is going to make them a million bucks. It never does. Because Irish-Americans are good at the lip-service of sentimentality: "How CUTE! Isn't that just DARLING?" but ask them to shell out for more than an Irish colleen doll with flaming red artificial hair and they go all quiet.

No, the Irish diaspora is not the solution to our current problems. Nor is a two-day think in of the Establishment in Farmleigh.

The idea that such a gathering would allow the capture of great ideas misses the point that people with great ideas don't hang on to them on the off-chance of an invite to Farmleigh. They get on with making those ideas happen.

Talking

I'm sure the lads enjoyed each other's company, and the Farmleigh fest let the Intel guy give out to us for not doing enough R&D, although how that would have prevented the burst of the property bubble is not clear.

But, at the end of the talking, we're left with no immediate solution.

Other than Diasporation.

- Terry Prone