In 1987 Brian Lenihan Sr told us sternly: 'We can't all live on a small island'. With the publication this week of the ESRI's forecast that 50,000 people will leave Ireland this year the spin machine, which has been chuntering along steadily since recession hit, has burst into one of its periodic spurts of overdrive. Piaras Mac Éinrí traces a history of emigration, and the governmental obfuscation that seeks to characterise it as individual choice, and not the consequence of systemic failure.