Ireland could provide some relief for Canada’s labour shortage, says the Newfoundland-born ambassador to the Emerald Isle. Loyola Hearn, former MHA, MP and current Canadian ambassador to Ireland, told the St. John’s Board of Trade about the Canada-Ireland connections, including $1.6 billion in trade and the fact that Ireland receives the sixth-most amount of Canadian foreign in-vestment. And one of the country’s most valuable exports — currently in a recession that started in 2008, with an unemployment rate of 14 per cent — are workers. “We have a lot of people asking about Canada, and the potential, everywhere I go, and I travel extensively in Ireland,” he said. “There’s no place I go now where I don’t have people coming up who either have been to Canada or are going to Canada, want to go to Canada.” Hearn said older Irish people have expressed concerns that the country is losing its young. That’s something Newfoundlanders can relate to in the wake of a vanished labour force that headed west for employment after the cod moratorium. “They are to an extent, but I always say you never lose young people by letting them go, and spread their wings and get experience,” Hearn said. “You lose young people by (them) hanging around with nothing to do.” Hearn pointed out Ireland is geographically closer than Alberta.