It didn’t take long for Ciaran Coyle to understand what the outcome of the EU referendum meant. Just a few hours in fact.

The young Irishman was discussing the repercussions of the result outside a bar in Manchester with two others when, he says, he was spat at and assaulted. The attack left a friend, another Irishman, in hospital with a bleed on his brain.

“The only reason we can think of why anyone would do this is because he heard two Irish guys disagreeing with the outcome of the referendum,” says the young musician, who moved to Manchester in 2003 for university and came to love the city’s unique cultural buzz.



The incident has left Coyle considering a move to a “a more tolerant” part of Europe. More than three months after Britain’s Brexit vote, he is one of many Irish millennials in Britain who are beginning to reappraise their future in a country that currently attracts one in 12 Irish graduates in search of work, and is home to many Irish students.

For many, a growing unease has been compounded by this month’s Conservative party conference, where the mood music sounded to some Irish people like a 21st-century resurrection of the “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs” era.



Annie Hoey, president of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), says she is starting to become aware, anecdotally, of Irish students beginning to think twice about plans to move to the UK.

Young Irish4Europe campaigners hand out leaflets at a Gaelic football match in west London in May. Photograph: Souvid Datta/The Guardian

“Since the vote there’s a sense that things have changed and it’s hard not to pick up on media coverage of some of the hostility from some in Britain towards EU immigrants, whether it is attacks or things that are being said in the workplace.”

The Irish ambassador to Britain, Dan Mulhall, says: “There are 7,000 to 8,000 Irish people, young and educated, in Canary Wharf. If you turn them into second-class citizens they will just go somewhere else.”

For others, it is not a question of choosing to move elsewhere, but of fear about their continued right to remain in the UK.

Sarah and Robin Gill run four restaurants in south and east London, including the critically acclaimed The Dairy. Originally from south Dublin, the couple have lived in Britain for more than a decade.

After the vote to leave the EU was announced, Robin says, confusion was rife among their waiters and chefs, many of whom are from outside the UK, about their status in the country. One staff member asked Robin: “Do you need to go?”

Aside from worries about legal status and the rise in anti-foreigner sentiment in Britain, the potential economic impact of Brexit may yet act as a drag on young Irish immigration.

This is a concern Jack Cantillon, a trainee solicitor and executive board member of the London Irish Graduate Network, has detected among his peers. “I know of some people who have been looking at various fall-back options, such as going to Canada or the US, if the economy here was to make it difficult for them to pursue their careers in the way that they wanted.”

Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh, originally from Co Kilkenny, studied at the Royal College of Art, where a bursary from the EU covered her fees. During the course she came up with the idea for Sugru, a flexible silicone that can be manipulated before it hardens and is used for fixing and augmenting everyday objects, and which has now reached yearly sales of about £5m.

She is now worried that Brexit will affect Sugru’s sales if increased regulations and border controls are introduced.

Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh, developer of Sugru. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

“I very much hope for the sake of London’s future creative community and creative economy that [Brexit] doesn’t result in further barriers to young creative people choosing to come here and continue to do the great things that make it such a vibrant and interesting place,” she says.

“Being so international means we found it very hard to believe that anyone could vote for Brexit, considering the world is just opening up and we are all connecting more. It is hard to believe in this day and age that people would want to close things down,” she adds.

Opposition to the leave vote is not universal among the Irish community. Catherina Casey, a prominent figure in London Irish circles who has set up the Irish in London online network, says the capital is the “most culturally rich city in the world” but describes the EU as an administrative entity that has not worked for the UK.

The vote could lead to Ireland reconsidering its position within Europe, she believes. “Obviously I am Irish and very proudly Irish but I am a parent as well. My children live in this country,” she says.

“I feel that this country needs to go back to basics a little bit and find out what it is all about and redefine itself in order that it knows what sort of relationship it will have with both Europe and the world. From an Irish perspective, Ireland and Britain will always be inextricably linked, whether Britain is in Europe or out of Europe.”







