Elderly Irish emigrants in Britain are to receive another €1 million, it was announced today.
The grants, which will be distributed before Christmas, range from €600 for the Irish Pensioners' Club in Kilburn, London to €100,000 to pay for a new building for Cricklewood Homeless concern.
Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said he had great admiration for the frontline organisations in Britain who carried out invaluable work in caring for emigrants.
He added that the money allocated to the Government's Dion (Shelter) fund for emigrants in Britain had risen from €952,300 in 1999 to €4.3 million this year.
There are more than one million Irish people in Britain, making up 1.5 per cent of the population. Many of them have established successful careers but the biggest problem lies with the Irish who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s.
Many were unskilled workers who left school early and spent their lives in the British building industry with companies like McAlpines Fusiliers.
According to the British mental health charity Mind, many end up without pensions in their old age or when ill.
The Irish are the only ethnic minority group to have shortened their lifespan by coming to Britain.
They also have the highest rate of mental illness and are 50 per cent more likely to commit suicide and nine times more likely to suffer from alcoholism than British people.
Independent TD Dr Jerry Cowley, who founded a retirement village in Mayo for returned emigrants, said the increase in funding was welcome.
His Safe Home Programme in Mulrannu received an additional €22,000.
However, Dr Cowley said the total grant did not even come close to matching the billions of pounds which the emigrants had sent home to their families in the 1950s and 1960s.
"They were our saviours in our hour of need. Because the emigrants are so elderly, there is now a limited time window which needs to be taken advantage of," he said.
He added that Finance Minister Brian Cowan had overseen the 2002 report of the Task force on Emigrants, which recommended a budget of €34 million by 2005.
"He now has a golden opportunity to make a difference and to stop a blot in our copybook getting worse," he said.