Warning of mental health risk to jobless

A "Copernican shift” in the way we treated the newly unemployed was needed if "long-term damage to the mental health of huge swathes of the population" was to be avoided, one of the foremost policy analysts in the State has warned.

John Sweeney, senior policy analyst with the National Economic and Social Council, was this morning addressing a post-Budget meeting hosted by the Wheel - an umbrella of NGOs working with poor and vulnerable groups.

Urging that the economic crisis not be "wasted", he said: "We are already taking steps in the wrong direction."

The vision in the Towards 2016 partnership, agreement which saw a strong role for public services and the integration of the community and voluntary sector into the "orchestra" of public policy, remained valid. And yet it was not even referenced in the McCarthy "trawl through public expenditure", he said.

Radical reform of the way public services were delivered was needed and the economic crisis was an opportunity to stop doing things "in the old way and just do more of them" as had been the case during the Celtic Tiger.

Describing those losing jobs as the "largest and most poignant group in the current downturn", he said they were being treated with "suspicion" and "punishment".

Mr Sweeney criticised the fact job-seeker payments were no longer paid by electronic fund transfer into bank accounts, the reduction of the benefits to 18 and 19 year-olds and the compulsion on others to take the first job offer or lose their benefit.

This was in contrast to Britain where for example there were plans to ensure every job-seeker had their own website to log into to check job or training opportunities, he said.

It was not the unemployment figures that merited attention, but the duration of unemployment, he said. Even when Ireland had emerged from the last recession there were huge numbers who remained unemployed. They had become "demoralised" and "dispirited" and had effectively withdrawn from the workforce.

"Long-term unemployment feeds depression, poverty, family discord."