A chara, – Residing, as a I do, in the Taoiseach's home county of Mayo, where I am just one of 12,750 people who are registered as unemployed within the county, I am baffled by Enda Kenny's statement last week ("Taoiseach says jobless must be prepared to take up any work", Front Page, February 24th) . This is the same week that the Western People, (the main paper within the county), carries news of 14 job vacancies (four of which are part-time). On Friday, the same day as the report of his statement, Mid West Radio, in its Jobs Slot,announced a total of 10 jobs available within the region.
I am ready to take up work, but where can it be found? I have been unemployed for the past nine months, my post made redundant as a direct result of Government cuts to the Local Development Social Inclusion Programme (LDSIP), a programme I had managed successfully for the past 14 years.
In the past nine months I have never had an interview with Social Protection, despite its policy that states it will meet all the unemployed within three months of them becoming jobless.
I have been actively seeking work, but to no avail, so I decided on upskilling. I hold a masters degree in rural development and have 30 years of experience in this field, but since this area of work has had budget cut after budget cut for the past four years, there are virtually no job opportunities in this type of work.
Having once been a feature writer for the Farmers' Journalrural living section, I decided to sign up for the I rish Timestraining course in journalism to brush up my writing skills and afterwards try to obtain some freelance work.
I was made aware that this course was eligible for Fás funding under the Fás technical assistance budget and that if I was approved I could receive the maximum contribution of €500 towards the course which costs €1,650.
On contacting the local Fás office by phone, I gave all the relevant details, registered and was informed that it would be two and a half weeks before I could meet a member of their staff. Such a meeting was required in order to assess the eligibility of the course and also my suitability for it.
An appointment was scheduled in an office that necessitated the Fás officer making a 50-mile round trip to meet me. The meeting lasted approximately three minutes, where I was informed that a particular form needed to be filled in by the training provider. However, the Fás official didn’t have the required form and had no computer facilities to download it, but promised to post it out to me when she returned to her base. Two days later, since the form hadn’t arrived, I contacted her by phone to be told that she hadn’t got a chance to post it! I proceeded to make the 50-mile round trip to her office to pick it up as time was running out and start date for the course was looming and the form when filled out had to be assessed also in the Fás office in Galway.
As a result of my experience with Fás and because of the high unemployment figures, coupled with the blindingly obvious lack of jobs in the Taoiseach’s own constituency, I find his prepared statement, as reported by Paul Cullen at the launch of “Pathways to Work,” quite amazing.
Where are the jobs? Where is my interview with social protection? Where is the Fás officer’s computer or at least a briefcase with a set of relevant forms in it? From my recent experience Fás would need to change more than its name if the “Pathways to Work” is not to be renamed ” Labyrinths to Work.” – Yours, etc,
Sir, – On one hand, you have those who earn a salary higher than their European counterparts and/or have their salary/bonus expectations met even when it means breaking Government ceilings and/or – even when you might identify their actions as being part-cause for the current recession – have their speculations guaranteed and/or are paid (ultimately by the taxpayer) to manage debts they themselves incurred.
On the other, you have people who have recently found themselves unemployed, through no fault of their own. They will now lose social welfare payments (let’s stop saying “benefits”, please, it’s as misleading as “friendly fire”) unless they take the first job they are offered, no matter what it is, no matter what it pays, no matter if it has no prospects, no matter what their qualifications and experience, no matter what their expectations: they are reduced to economic cannon fodder.
I could better cope with such self-righteous intolerance of the latter if the former were tested and judged as harshly. – Yours, etc,