Had a chat with my old boss in the Irish Echo newspaper (Australia’s Irish newspaper) yesterday, who could well be one of the few to benefit from this recession and Ireland’s growing emigration flow to Australia. The paper was 21 years old last year, and on a fortnightly basis and a tiny budget keeps the Irish expat community informed on what’s going on back home and what’s happening within the Irish community in Australia. And that community is growing by the day.

Visa applications are going through the roof. The number of Irish people being sponsored to stay on in Australia (up to four years, initially, on a 457 business visa) has risen by 50% in the last year, according to stats from the Echo. Backpackers are beginning to find it harder to find the easy work that sustained them for so long, but going by the figures, those willing to commit to the sunburnt country for more than an extended holiday are doing alright. Going by the flood of my friends heading to Melbourne, I don’t know what I’m doing here at all.

The demographic of the Irish in Australia, as a result, must be shifting slightly. The gulf between the transient backpackers and the long-stay expats is being filled by the medium-term emigrant, the highly-skilled twentysomethings and thirtysomethings who are settling on a more regular basis now for between two and five years. I’ve written about them for the Sunday Business Post recently.

To help out the backpackers, and pave the way for further on-site innovations to follow, the Echo has put in place a new free ad section to help incoming Irish jobseekers. I was due to be with the Echo for two years, and we had just started on the first incarnation of a new website, incorporating two blogs, when I was wrenched back to Ireland unexpectedly.  Literally, it was all just going live the week I left to come home, and I was looking forward to getting really stuck in to making the site a core part of the Echo”s offering. Aaron, who capably filled my seat, and Billy, who runs the show, have done well with the site since then.They’ve also added some RSS feeds to their news blog and sports blog, making them more worthwhile reads on the whole. The update frequency is getting better, too, but needs to approach ‘daily update’ status, I reckon, to really generate regular return readers.

The paper had gone for 20 years with its only web presence being a clunker of a site that demanded a hefty plugin and a subscription to view their online reader. The new site offers some free content, an upgraded reader, and more free info.  Judging by the conversation with Billy, the initial toe-dipping has gone well for the Echo, and phase two is imminent, which I think is great. The Echo has a strong hold in the long-term expat market, and is distributed free in Irish pubs, clubs and hostels across Australia, where it often goes head to head with the other Irish fortnightly, the low-brow What’s the Craic, which is pointed firmly at backpackers and pub crawlers, often aiming squarely for the crotch.

The Echo’s jobs pages alone make it worth picking up for Irish emigrants, and its sports pages split their attention between sport at home, the Irish abroad, and the slew of GAA stars now playing AFL. And the potential for an even greater web presence and more besides, the Irish Echo could well increase its status as Australia’s most important portal for Irish arrivals, both new and old.