Working to get jobless off the dole queue

Long-term unemployment hurts whole families and can become an intergenerational problem.

Aside from the depression of not working or having money to pay for basic services, people face a cruel catch-22 scenario where the longer they are out of work, the harder it can be to get a job.

People seeking work will be encouraged by figures released by Eurostat last week which show our unemployment rate fell from 13.6% to 11.8% over a year, one of the largest decreases in the EU.

Nonetheless, a more disturbing statistic overshadows that little glimmer of hope.

Ireland has the fourth highest rate of long-term unemployment. Six in every ten people on the live register have been jobless for 12 months or more. Facilitating their return to work is a major task, one that was pushed by the troika under the bailout programme when they were here.

Redesigned buildings offering a host of services for the jobless under the one roof are the way forward, according to the Government. These new employment and support services, called Intreo offices, are only getting off the ground in some areas.

In fact, in Cork City and county alone, there is only one such office to cater for an estimated 50,000 on the live register, according to Fianna Fáil.

Kevin Humphreys, the newly appointed junior social protection minister, has admitted that more must be done to get employers involved in services locally and to take on the jobless.

According to those familiar with support services and the long-term unemployed, there has been a mixed reaction to how the Intreo offices are working.

John Stewart, head of policy at the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, explained that there is more space in the new offices for crucial one-to-one meetings, with a range of services on offer.

Many delays people had in processing jobseeker’s payments have also been tackled, he said.

While some group engagement sessions and discussions in the offices are seen as useful, others are “confusing” for clients and just viewed as having a “lot of slides”, Mr Stewart said.

The feedback from the new offices is often positive, he said, but added that there are problems whereby case officers did not have training information or lacked specific details about local job opportunities.

The organisation is supportive of the JobsPlus scheme, where employers get financial rewards for hiring the long-term unemployed.

“Links between Intreo and local employers are crucial. But it will only work if the service can match people’s skills to the work available. Some offices are starting to involve employers, but it is still relatively early days,” Mr Stewart said.

The organisation wants incentives offered to the long-term jobless as well as to employers.

“Initiatives that support recruitment of the long-term unemployed, if used, are obviously something we welcome,” Mr Stewart said.

“But there should be some recognition for the long-term unemployed. There used to be back-to-work allowance, but that was stopped a number of years ago. It should be replaced.”

Mr Humphreys will now undertake a national check of how Intreo offices, as well as community employment schemes, are working.

He said the numbers entering JobsPlus schemes could be doubled in some areas.

“There have been some very positive experiences of it. But we need to make sure that employers know about it,” he said.

“Staff in Intreo offices are amazed that employers locally don’t know. A lot of promotion needs to be done.

“If someone is in need of a plumber or an electrician, they should be able to go to their local Intreo office.”

Paul Murphy, a former Socialist Party MEP, said the jobs crisis could be better addressed through apprenticeship schemes rather than payments to employers.

He pointed to evidence of exploitation and abuse of workers’ rights in other schemes, such as JobBridge.

“Such perverse incentives [paying employers] are a blunt instrument and can create displacement where someone is moved out of a job and replaced by someone from the scheme,” he said, warning that under the Coalition’s policies, more “people on the dole will come under more pressure to do crap jobs for free”.

For the moment though, everything is being done to get the estimated 188,000 long-term unemployed off welfare and into much-needed jobs.