The Government and unemployment

The Government’s response to the national economic collapse and the consequent jobs crises has lacked urgency, focus and a clear sense of direction. It has failed to properly communicate a sense that it understands the scale of the crises, that it has a clear plan to address the challenges we as a nation face and that it possesses both the conviction and the skills to implement its plans.

Firstly I think we need to understand what we are facing. Ireland like everywhere else has been a victim of the global credit crunch, but in the Irish case this has been exacerbated by a property market bubble and reckless lending polices which have brought the banks to the verge of ruin. The bursting of the property bubble has led to collapse of employment not only in the building trade but across the professions which had become dangerously dependent on the sector.

To this has been added the severe deprecation of sterling vis-a-vis the euro which had made Irish exports to the UK far more expensive. This has hit small indigenous Irish exporters very hard who are still dependent on the UK as their major market. In short the Irish economy has been hit by a perfect economic storm.

What is important to grasp is not just the sheer size and force of the storm but the speed at which it hit. All the indications are that the Irish economy fell off a cliff in or around April 2008. The speed is important because it has meant that it has been very difficult for companies to adjust to the rapidly changing business environment. Many indeed have failed to do so and gone to the wall. The speed of the crises demands a similar speed of response from Government. One which to date we have not seen.

To be fair to the Government when they are not back-pedalling from some hastily thought out initiative they have taken some worthwhile measures. I welcome recent announcements that the Government is to spend €250m on job protection on a "temporary employment subsidy scheme." The jobs subsidy would only apply to 30,000 workers in the first instance giving them €200 per week for 15 months. I also welcome Minister O’Keefe’s announcement that unemployed workers will have access to 2,500 new places on part-time undergraduate and postgraduate courses from September as part of the Government's efforts to retrain and upskill the labour force.

I would however respectfully point out that there are only 2500 places at a time when we have a record 372,800 signing on for jobseekers' benefit, and while €250m may sound like a lot of money but when you think that the Government spent €220 million on the ill fated PPARs project it does put it into perspective.

One cannot help thinking that Government is applying a sticking plaster to what is gaping wound. 

Most commentators have been struck by the fact that this recession is hitting the professions and the middle classes very hard, but what is most remarkable is the impact of the recession on youth unemployment specifically among young men.

Sean O’Rian, the NUI Maynooth sociologist, has recently pointed out that in the latest Quarterly National Household Survey the major trend that stands out is the disastrous collapse in working class employment with growing differences between the position of those with third level education and those without. While employment for those with third level education has remained stable over the past year, the collapse for all others has been in the range of 10 to 20%. Unemployment has increased for those with third level education but employment has largely held up. In plain English it pays to have a degree. While the pain is being felt all around, the sectoral, occupational and educational data points to both the particularly disastrous short-term and long-term effects of the recession on those in manual and service occupations.

In 2008 Tom Boland CEO of the HEA urged young people working the construction sector many whom had left school without a qualification to think seriously about returning to full time education. It is now obvious that the issue that Tom Boland identified has come to pass. The jobs in construction have indeed disappeared and are very unlikely to return. We need as a matter of urgency to put in place a major scheme to attract and facilitate young people back into full time education to ensure they have the skills for future employment. That means a lot more than 2500 places, we are talking about multiples of that number if we are to have any realistic impact on the problem.

Some time ago Dr Ronnie O’Toole stated that he believed that the downturn in the construction sector would have a far more negative impact on rural Ireland as in many cases the construction sector was in fact the only major employer in the regions. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this contention.

For this reason I believe we will have to look not only at providing more educational places but also at putting in some structured form of distance education.

One of the major disincentives to taking up full time education is the cost of renting and living away from home- if we are really serious about getting large numbers of people to go back to full time education we should be looking at new and innovative ways of delivering education to the people where they need it, rather than delivering the people to the educational system..