The Government has suggested Social Employment. They want to take ten thousand people off the live register and put them to work at community projects. If it works they plan to add another forty thousand to the scheme.
"Unemployed will have to work for their Dole" screamed the headlines of the O'Reilly media machine rags. Because we all know that the unemployed are lazy and completely to blame for the dire situation they now find themselves in.
455,000 on the live register.
A massive figure. Worth quoting for those people who want to us to believe that it is the paying of social welfare to these people that is stalling economic recovery. These people, the same people who blindly paid tax into the black hole that was government spending during the Tiger years.
But lets talk figures.
How many people are paying income tax in Ireland today?
Some people, particularly the once self employed, find it difficult, and in some cases impossible, to draw benefits.
And how many people are being juggled off the register and onto FAS courses, and back again?
And how many trained workers will be shafted and replaced by the cheaper, new slave caste of Ireland, the Social Employed?
FAS is a failed organisation. Everyday local Social Welfare offices make mistakes that would not be tolerated under any other circumstances but the quasi-anarchism of post tiger Eire. The HSE was supposed to save Ireland's health system but has instead totally destroyed it.
Social Employment will fail for the same reasons.
Poor planning by completely incompetent bureaucrats unfit to serve the Irish people.
Sinn Féin believes that there are many benefits to people working in the community, but this should be done through Community Employment schemes with proper training and employment opportunities rather than through some ill thought out and unstructured idea.
Wexford Sinn Féin Rep, Cllr. Anthony kelly has called for an increase and modernisation of CE schemes to make them more relevant for the needs of society and local Government and the ring fencing of a set number of places for the young unemployed.
Isn't it strange that your news programmes and papers haven't raised these issues instead of implying that the unemployed are lazy and to blame for economic stagnation?
Maybe they're trying to influence your thinking ahead of a devastating budget, which will target those on welfare and public services.
But perish the thought, that would mean that the Irish media is biased, and in breech of its ethical responsibility to report a truthful account of the news.
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