An Irishman's Diary

So goodbye Muirsheen Durkin,
I'm sick and tired of workin',
No more I'll dig the praties,
No longer I'll be fool.
For as sure as me name
is Carney
I'll be off to California,
Where instead of diggin' praties
I'll be diggin' lumps of gold.

Do you remember "poor oul' Muirsheen Durkin" from the old song that became a hit for Johnny McEvoy and a dancehall favourite back in the 1960s? He was working all the hours God gave him to scrape a decent living out of the stony, grey soil. And wasn't he devastated he was when that young cur Carney got "tired of diggin' praties" and hightailed it off to California to get rich? Well, old Muirsheen had the last laugh. He's just sold 14 acres, near Loughrea, to a sharp-suited property developer from Dublin for €6.3 million.

The land, which wouldn't support a jennet, is currently being developed for "executive homes and Galway's most stylish apartments". He has also gotten himself a woman. At last! "But at his age?" you might be thinking. Well, he may be in his 70s, but he as fit as a fiddle and browned off with living by himself. She and Muirsheen are off on a three-week Caribbean cruise next week.

And the bold Mr Carney? Well, a funny thing happened on the way to LA. Didn't he go there via the rocky road to Dublin, the boat to Holyhead and then down to London on the train. He was hardly out the door of Euston Station when he bumped into a fellow from home who'd been over in England for a couple of years and who said he'd fix him up straight away with a job on the buildings. And the money was great. Carney thought he'd do it for a few months - until he saved the fare for America - and moved into lodgings in Kilburn.

He's still there. Not in the boarding house (that's now used by the social services to house Iraqi asylum-seekers), and not on the building site either - there's plenty of construction going on but he did his back in a few years ago and hasn't been able to work a day since. In fact he can hardly walk much these days.

He lives in a hostel nearby. "It's not great," he says, though he will admit, if you press him, that it's better than the couple of years he spent sleeping rough.

Unlike Muirsheen he never "got himself a woman". There was a girl, "a nurse from Limerick", whom he sometimes met at dances in the old Galtymore ballroom in Cricklewood but they lost contact when she moved down to a big new hospital in Surrey.

Over the years Carney worked on a variety of projects across London, including roads, the Underground and "half the City". There are no signs or plaques anywhere to say who did all the work, but he remembers: freezing days in the mud shoving a wheelbarrow or poised on scaffolding overlooking the Bank of England. He, and men like him, provided much of the brawn during the Thatcher boom years - just as an earlier generation had helped to reconstruct bomb-ravaged, postwar Britain. He even did a stint on the infamous Channel Tunnel project - "the toughest job of the lot" - one of an estimated 5,000 Irishmen, out of a total of 15,000 construction workers, who worked on modern engineering's greatest feat.

He hasn't been back to Ireland in 40 years. Not since "the mother died" and "the brother got the home place". He got his share - "a good few quid at the time" - but it is long since flittered on drink and the dogs.

Most of the "the lads" have long gone - some, "the cute ones", back to Ireland with their money saved to a better life there; others to leafy outer London where they've married and settled into English suburban life, their "plastic Paddy" children speaking with Estuary accents. They are not being replaced. Walk past a building site in London today and the accents are more likely to be from Poland or Kosovo than Kerry or Galway. With a mixture of pride and just a hint of regret, Carney says: "The only young fellows coming over these days are the ones with education, engineers and the like, to get a bit of experience." The trucks of the great construction companies that rumble through the streets of the British capital bear the names of "the boys who done well for themselves" - Lynch, McNicholas, Clancy, Murphy, Kennedy.

The "leftovers", marooned in multi-cultural cool Britannia, are largely forgotten and isolated. Many are scarred by the ravages of alcohol, drugs and mental illness. Some live on the streets and drift in and out of hostels for the homeless, others in state-subsidised, often sub-standard rented accommodation - quite a lot of it owned by Irish landlords. As a nation we may profess a deeply ingrained hatred of "landlordism" but have taken up the practice with gusto. There's not much of a "community" left, often no relatives, usually no money.

When men like Carney die "the council" buries them, with all the dignity that a local authority can muster. They are laid in the 21st-century equivalent of paupers' graves in cemeteries such as that in East Finchley. The exact spot is marked with a little cross and a number. "If anyone wanted to trace back who was buried there it is possible," explains a helpful official. No one ever will.

If you meet Carney in a pub - his only outing - he may ask if there's any news from "home", or "how is oul' Muirsheen Durkin doing?" You don't have the guts to tell him.

Following the landmark RTÉ Prime Time documentary of Christmas 2003, which featured men like Carney, many felt that something should be done. It is. The Aisling Return To Ireland Project provides an annual supported holiday and aftercare for long-term Irish migrants to Britain. Further information, including accounts of the emotional trips back to Ireland, can be found on this truly remarkable London-Irish charity's website - www.aisling.org.uk. There are also "testimonials" from some of the men. Be warned, though. They will break your heart.