Oral history of emigration society recorded for Internet

The Irish Centre for Migration Studies (ICMS) is offering insights into the lives of Irish people who didn't emigrate.

The oral history project, which is one year old, is about to be extended to Northern Ireland.

The voice of the Irish diaspora has received plenty of attention. What the ICMS project, based at UCC, wanted to achieve was a record of the hitherto silent voices, the voices of those who remained on the land and never left the towns and villages.

"This project looks at the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, using their own voices. What makes it additionally different is that the interviews, photographs and other materials, including letters and family memorabilia, will be made available on the Internet. Anyone who logs on to http:/migration.ucc.ie /oralarchive will be able to listen to these interviews and to explore a range of information about the period," says ICMS director Mr Piaras Mac Einri. ICMS interviewers have been travelling across Ireland for the past year developing what Mr Mac Einr i believes will become a unique archive. It has already begun to pay dividends. More than 40 interviews have been conducted by the ICMS team, one involving a north Cavan woman. News of her interview was carried in the parish newsletter which also gave details of the website. People from far and wide began to log on to hear from old friends and neighbours.

Now the project, which is called "Breaking the Silence: Staying at Home in an Emigrant Society", is to be extended to Belfast, giving it an all-Ireland dimension. The ICMS is training 16 interviewers in Northern Ireland who will begin their work shortly. The centre, according to Mr Mac Einr i, will work closely with Dr Brian Lambkin of the sister institution, The Centre for Migration Studies at the Ulster-American Folk Park and with Dr Catriona Ni Laoire of the department of geography at Queen's University.

There are even more ambitious plans, however. Mr Mac Einri says the ultimate aim is to create an Internet archive to be known as The On-Line Archive of the Irish Worldwide. It is proposed that some 1,000 interviews will be recorded with Irish people and people of Irish descent around the world. When completed, this record, coupled with the record of those who didn't leave Irish shores, will stand as a definitive account of the phenomenon of Irish emigration which was often as heart-rending for the ones left behind as for the emigrants.

Irish emigrants, using the ICMS website, will have live access to the voices of other emigrants. "The ICMS believes that the need for such personal accounts is greater than ever in an increasingly diverse society and that collecting such stories and placing them side by side with the experience of the Irish in other places may promote greater understanding of the challenges Ireland now faces . . . The work is important for the future of Irish society and for the better understanding of our own past," Mr Mac Einri Enri said.

And now that Ireland is becoming a country of immigration, the ICMS with help from the Ireland Fund, is starting to turn its attention to refugees and asylum-seekers as well. In co-operation with the Irish Refugee Council and Trocaire, a CD-rom information package on asylum-seekers and refugees in Ireland and elsewhere is nearing completion and will soon be available to schools.