It’s a bridge but to where?

STRANGELY, the first thing mass communication empire Facebook wants you to do when you turn up at their HQ for a jobs launch is sign a non-disclosure form.

Oh, the irony. How many work hopefuls must have wished they had a non-disclosure agreement with the site after being turned down for employment at the last hurdle by would-be bosses because a cursory trawl of their Facebook pages revealed pictures of them up to all sorts of activities which might be considered unprofessional in a work environment?

But although Facebook has been caught up in privacy rows recently, with millions of users signing off, Enda Kenny had the bright wheeze of launching his initiative to get those signing-on the dole into internships with the company’s European hub as the backdrop.

Obviously, these are not real jobs, but then in economic terms, this is not a real government of a real sovereign nation as everything has to be approved by our masters in the EU/IMF troika, so the Taoiseach was making the best of a bad lot with 5,000 unemployed people being given an extra fifty quid a week to engage in glorified work experience.

Social Protection Minister Joan Burton said the scheme had been a great success in the US, but given the fact that the most famous internship in history was that undertaken by Monica Lewinsky perhaps the slogan: “Hands On Experience For Interns” was not that suitable considering Ms Lewinsky's experiences with Bill Clinton.

Of course, it will all be very different under the shiny new Irish initiative dubbed the Job Bridge.

However, the problem with being a bridge is that people walk all over you and there is no guarantee the interns will be kept on after the incentive to employers runs out after what Ms Burton rather colourfully described as their “audition” for work after being matched by an “employment dating agency”.

Launching the bid to massage the dole figures, sorry, create life-changing opportunities, the Taoiseach recalled a young man coming to him last summer and “making applications for a job at the lower end of the pay scale”.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t referring to Richard Bruton pleading to be kept on in a second-tier frontbench role after his cack-handed coup attempt, but rather a constituent whose determination to find a job helped inspire the scheme.

Enda was in chipper form and the body language between him and Ms Burton did not reflect the Cabinet bust-up over Fine Gael’s bid to cut pay levels for those in the hospitality industry.

Indeed, the Social Protection Minister declared that “this country has a great future”, which is quite a change of tune from her “this country is banjaxed” mantra of just a few months ago.

But Enda was also in acrobatic form, carrying out a shameless somersault over his indications the previous day that he wanted bonus row semi-state boss Declan Collier to quit his role on the board that oversees payments at nationalised AIB. Whatever gave us that idea, he wondered?

It wasn’t you Enda, no?

And with that he pole-vaulted over the Healy-Rae phone fandango surrounding RTÉ’s Celebrities Go Wild show with a bizarre deftness that left him not quite accusing anyone, but issuing the unusual warning: “Celebrities do go wild — and this money should be paid back.”

Yes, but by which wild celebrity Enda? Someone like Amy Winehouse, or perhaps someone closer to home?