New government should target long-term and youth unemployment

THE issue of long-term and youth unemployment is among the most pressing challenges facing the new Government.

It hasn’t featured much in the campaign, but it is there, embedded in homes and communities, across the country. If the new Government does not prioritise this new issue, it will act as a major drag, on any prospective major recovery and on the stabilisation of the public finances. It will further increase inequalities within our society.

Ireland has moved, in less than four years, from a ‘full employment’ economy to one challenged by extensive ‘scarring’ — the technical term applied to the multiple negative effects of an extended period of unemployment. Long-term unemployment scars careers and it scars lives.