You can't go home again?

"I FIND myself trying not to start sentences with the words `In Australia'. But it was the last five years of my life." Mark d'Alton (33) is a vet from Killiney, Co Dublin. He is just one of the many returned emigrants who have found that settling back home has not been easy. "Life is too short to be always living in the one country, but once you decide to start moving, things get complicated. I don't regret it, but if you could be content with not going, life would be a lot easier,"he says.

According to a recent report prepared for the State by FAS, an increasing number of emigrants are returning to Ireland, lured by the apparent strength of the economy. Between 1991 and 1995 the number of immigrants was 141,000, with emigrants numbering 161,000. Immigrant figures are high for children under 15 and middle aged adults, suggesting large numbers of returned emigrants with children.

Returned emigrants are "a mixed bunch, from all backgrounds and of all ages", says Ciaran O'Conaill, executive director of the Irish Heritage Association (established to look after the needs of Irish emigrants). But returned emigrants are more likely to come from the middle classes the people with degrees and other qualifications which allow them maximum mobility - according to O'Conaill. Emigrants from the less privileged end of the scale are not as likely to risk returning. They have fewer options and more to lose if things don't work out.

Aidan Hines, a secondary school teacher from Castlebar in Co Mayo, spent seven years in New York. He says that while he was abroad, he felt "dislocated", but kept up with events in Ireland by reading the newspapers. He was not prepared for the sense of "alienation" that assailed him when he returned to live in Ireland: "People at home don't understand the problems I have re adapting. Even though I love being home, I feel alienated left in a vacuum. I miss the solidarity of the friendships I made with other emigrants in New York.

He and his wife (a nurse )went to the US in search of employment. They spent their time socialising with other Irish emigrants, meeting in Irish bars, discussing Ireland, reading Irish books. He enjoyed the camaraderie among the ranks of the displaced Irish: "The closeness of the expatriot Irish community kept us going. It was good to be able to express our Irishness openly and with pride without being labelled a Republican. But it is easier to love your country from a distance. Now that I'm back living at home there are lot of things that frustrate me about Ireland."

He is particularly dissatisfied with the apathy he sees here towards the position of emigrants abroad, and is involved in the Emigrant Vote Campaign: "At every level, from the Dail to the general public, there is a huge silence about emigration in this country, even though it affects everyone's life here, directly or indirectly." He still identifies more with other emigrants than with Irish people who have never been away.

While those seeking to emigrate can get information and support from several sources here in Ireland, and also on their arrival in many of the more popular emigrant destinations, there is no support service in place here to help returned emigrants to find their feet. "It would be a great idea," says Aidan Hines.

Ciaran O'Conaill is preparing a policy document on emigration which includes a proposal to establish a repatriation programme. He notes that, of the emigrants who return, up to 50 per cent leave again because they can't settle: "I blame this on a lack of policy with regard to repatriation."

Mark d'Alton is still torn about whether he should have stayed on in Melbourne, where he had his ideal veterinary job, working with small animals. He has not been able to find the same sort of job in Ireland, is depressed by the bad weather, and feels oppressed by Irish insularity: "Having lived in a pluralist, multi cultural society where I enjoyed all the different languages and food and colours of people on the street, I find the homogeneity and insimilarity of Ireland hard to take. Everyone is obsessed with history and Catholicism, and everything is so small."

However, he is delighted with the new confidence and liberalism he sees in Irish people; he also missed the Irish sense of humour and "feeling of soul" - qualities that he did not find in Australians: "Ultimately I feel I belong in Ireland: it is my country."

With emigrant married couples, inevitably one half of the partnership have been more enthusiastic about staying abroad, while the other will have been hankering for home.

Artist Margaret Morrisson and sculptor John McHugh got married when they were students in the NCAD. Later, Margaret followed John to the US when he started an MA at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1989. She had Saoirse, their first baby, there and ended up doing an MA too, but was never keen about staying.

AFTER three years in the US, they moved back to Achill, John's home territory (Margaret is from Dublin). "John loved the US and would go back tomorrow, but not me, she says. "The small town we lived in was Bible belt country, completely alien to me. I wanted to get out so fast. Especially when I had Saoirse: I couldn't have faced rearing children in the States."

Now the couple run a vegetarian restaurant during the summer months, and work on their art during the winter months in Dooagh. Although John agreed to return, he still feels that he is "missing out on things". Another problem he finds is that "although people who come back often have a lot to offer, this is not recognised by those who never left. You try to make suggestions and contributions, and all you get is obstacles thrown in your path".

Sean Conlon and Brid O'Donoghue waited until the oldest of their four children was nearing secondary school entry age before they returned from a 12 year sojourn on the Continent (eight years in France and four in Belgium). "Any time before secondary is the right time to come back," says Sean, who made the initial move from Killarney to the outskirts of Paris to take up an "exciting job offer" with an American company. The company eventually transferred him and his family to a village in Belgium. "We were open and happy about the move," says Brid. "The children were so young then it didn't really matter. But questions about secondary school began to crop up. It made us figure out our direction for the future. We never felt like compulsory emigrants. We felt we had a choice and we wanted to go home."

Sean applied for a job in Ireland and was successful. Initially, the children were not thrilled about the move: "There were tears the night we told them about the move. Iseult, our second child, was devastated. She said she would miss her friends terribly. Their reaction forced us to mull over the whole thing again, but in the end we decided it was for the best."

The children at this stage were trilingual, having been brought up to speak Irish within the family ("We wanted to enhance their Irish identity, even though we were living abroad," says Brid). Yet it was difficult to place them in Irish speaking schools when the family returned to Ireland in 1994.

Finally, a national school agreed to take the three younger children, but it proved impossible to get their eldest, Morgan, into an Irish speaking secondary school. "Instead we found him a place in a new bilingual English and French programme in Newpark Comprehensive, Blackrock," says Brid.

SHE WAS upset that "because we had been away for so long, there was no way for us to get into the system here, which is as soon as your baby is born, you put her name down for a secondary school. In France you are entitled by law to send your children to the nearest school".

Their experiences abroad have left Brid and Sean critical of certain aspects of life in Ireland. For Brid, the lack of inexpensive state run child care and creche services here is hard to take, after living in the French system, which offers "a great support to women, and to working mothers in particular".

The catalyst of a job offer back home combined with the desire to bring up children in Ireland seems to be the major decisive factor about the timing of an emigrant's return, and this clearly has not changed for some time, if the experiences of the McEnroy family from Oranmore, Co Galway, are anything to go by. Brian and Anne McEnroy spent nine years in Toronto before returning to Ireland in 1976. "By the time we had three of our five children, we felt Ireland was a better place to bring them up," says Brian, "but I wouldn't have dreamt of coming home without the security of a job."

Even with this security, he found his salary in Ireland was a third of what he had been paid in Toronto while the cost of living was just as expensive. He was happy, however, that moving back to Ireland gave his children a chance to get to know their grandparents.

Deirdre (25), the oldest of the McEnroy offspring, was five when they left. She remembers school as being far more lively and fun in Canada, encouraging the children to be more confident than the Irish equivalent. "Coming to Ireland was a bit of a shock," she remembers. "Things were much more regimented."

DEIRDRE says that if she ever wanted to emigrate, she would go to Canada, but her mother is not enthusiastic about anything too permanent: "It is nice for young people to go away and see a place, and then come home if they want to. I hope mine will be able to do that."

Sean Conlon agrees: "One of the reasons Irish society is looking up these days is because so many emigrants have come back. Their experiences have given them a good, questioning approach, so that they can operate as a very effective agent for change."