HARD TIMES:Thousands of people who never set foot in social welfare offices are learning what it's like to live on the dole, writes CARL O'BRIEN.
IT’S A bitter morning as a procession of people trudge their way through the slush of melting snow in the direction of Tallaght’s social welfare office.
The glass-ceilinged office lies at the heart of what promised to be the shimmering future of a newly prosperous Tallaght. Four luxury hotels sprouted up within a few hundred metres of each other, as well as steel and glass towers of high-end apartments and retail units worth hundreds of millions of euro.
It seemed as if the suburb was finally casting off the reputation for high unemployment, high crime levels and bad urban planning which dogged it over the 1980s and 1990s.
Today, the optimism is waning fast. Two of the hotels, the Tallaght Cross and the Glashaus, are closed; others are under severe strain. There are no lights on in entire blocks of newly built apartments. Many of the large retail units planned around the new Marks Spencer shopping centre lie empty.
Outside Tallaght’s welfare office, Finola (28) is wrapping up against the cold. She’s just filled out her first application form for unemployment benefit after losing her job at a hotel a week ago. “I felt absolutely horrible coming in here, to be honest. I tried to put it off as long as I could. I’ve been writing CVs, I’ve been in touch with every recruitment agency and heard absolutely nothing back from anyone,” she says.
“Lots of the people I worked with have kids, families. They were here last week, crying their eyes out, with no hope of getting anything. We thought our jobs were secure and everything would be grand.”
Finola, like thousands of others, is part of a young generation which is learning all about the jolting reality of a recession for the first time.
“I don’t know what it was like in the 1980s, maybe I was shielded from it by my parents. Just this morning I came across a few neighbours in the queue here.
“They’re saying it’s just like it was 20 years ago all over again. They’re older, but at least I’ve youth on my side,” Finola says.
Des Abbey (30), a father of three, says he’s about to sell his car after his landscaping business went bust.
“I can’t afford it. I have my insurance, have to pay road tax. Can’t afford it. As for holidays? There’ll be none this year.
“At the height of it all, we were doing very well. We were even giving work away, there was that much there. We had nice holidays, brought the kids wherever we went. Now, it’s all gone.
“I’m finding it hard to cope, raising a family on €360 a week. I’m at breaking point, really.”
Another first-time welfare recipient is Maggie (56), a waitress who has worked all her life.
“My husband is out sick and my hours at the hotel were cut back to just eight a week, so we’d virtually no money coming into the house,” she says.
“I don’t know what I’ll get or what I’m entitled to. We’re not rich, but we have some savings. But you don’t know how long that will last.”
Ann Connolly, Tallaght’s local office manager, is on the front line in dealing with the explosion in unemployment. The big difference between now and the 1980s, she says, is that more people are mired in debt.
“In the last recession, people didn’t have credit cards. They had no debt. Now, we have people who haven’t only lost their jobs, but they’re in debt as well . . . They have spending commitments associated with much higher incomes.
“The people coming in our door have never been here before. The stigma of the local office is still here, although it shouldn’t because we perform a number of roles, such as information, Fás, etc. It’s not the dole office anymore.”
The growth in numbers signing on at Tallaght has been startling.
While about 3,500 were signing on for most of the last decade, an avalanche of job losses in recent months has sent the overall figures skyward.
Last February, local biscuit manufacturer Jacobs Fruitfield said it would shed all 230 of its manufacturing jobs. A month later, publishing company Microprint’s plants went to the wall with the loss of 120 jobs. Weeks later, Tesco said it would relocate 200 of its workforce away from Tallaght.
By last week, the amount signing on was 7,000 and growing. The sheer number of claimants is causing problems for welfare offices around the country. Last Friday, the queue at Tallaght snaked outside the door, across the plaza, up the street and past Macari’s chipper.
Welfare offices are trying to cope by allocating appointments to claimants at different times of the day.
“It can be like running a factory,” Connolly says. “We try to treat people with dignity, humanity and respect, and treat the physical work of processing claims like a factory . . . But it can be very hard to plan, because we’re dependent on external factors at the end of the day.”
- Tomorrow: Carl O'Brien reports from the social welfare office in Bishop's Court, south Dublin