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ANALYSIS:The diaspora represents an obligation and a resource for the Irish in Ireland, write ROB KITCHIN and MARK BOYLE.

IN APRIL 2007, the then minister for foreign affairs Dermot Ahern stated that the time was right to “review our approach to our community across the globe and to develop a strategy for the years ahead”. Later in the same year, the economic commentator David McWilliams, in his book The Generation Game, argued that Ireland should seek to “exploit the demographic potential of the diaspora” to reinvigorate the nation.