After World War Two, the waves of Irish emigration to England in the 1940s and 1950s brought people desperate for work. Many came from rural Ireland. The Catholic Church in Ireland had noted this surge in emigration, and the potential loss of numbers for its parishes, with alarm. As early as 1942 the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, had set up a bureau for emigrants near Pearse Station in Dublin where trains left for the port of Dun Laoghaire. By 1946 the bureau recorded that it had assisted 16,000 people in just over two years by meeting them on arrival in Dublin from elsewhere in the country, arranging overnight hostel accommodation and, before they set off, advising them on and directing them to Catholic Associations abroad. The ferry from Dun Laoghaire Bomb damage to Camden Town Station, 1941 At the end of the Second World War, after the euphoria of victory had died, Londoners woke up to a devastated city. Collapsed buildings and dangerous structures ruined the streetscape. The infrastructure was in serious need of repair. A new and socially reforming government elected in 1945 saw that it had a huge task ahead. This government recognised that to rebuild Britain would require men and women prepared to roll up their sleeves. The Irish, often escaping unemployment and poverty at home, were welcomed into Britain. The UK permit office in Dublin directed applicants to specific areas as a condition of their admission to Britain. On arrival, they were required to register with the police and report any changes of address, and work was assigned on farms, aerodrome construction, demolition of bombed buildings and on the production line in munitions factories.