In times of need - Government will you ever do your job?

The latest unemployment figures are alarming. Almost 280,000 are now unemployed. The figure for September was up by 120,000 over a year earlier.

Some 80,800 of those jobs were lost in the construction industry, which helps to explain why twice as many men as women are currently unemployed.

As the purchasing power of so many people declined, the wholesale and retail sectors lost 31,400 jobs in what has become a vicious circle. A sizeable proportion of the losses can be explained by emigration and migrants returning to their home countries.

The national household survey provides a reliable guide. In the third quarter of this year the number of people employed was down 184,700 on the same period in 2008.

We are clearly in the midst of a crisis, but the politicians have still not devised a proper strategy to tackle the problem.

Public sector unions were offering to help last week by having their members take two weeks unpaid leave. Many people ridiculed the idea, but now we learn that the politicians are taking an extra week of paid holidays.

In an editorial yesterday the Irish Examiner highlighted the fact that our politicians have been shirking their responsibility to legislate in many areas. Instead of providing proper direction, they are leaving more and more issues for the courts to decide.

Without clear and thoughtful direction from the legislature in the form of precise, well-written laws, the Supreme Court must ultimately decide the intent of outdated legislation. Last week there was a dispute about the rights of the biological father of a boy being reared by his mother and her lesbian partner. This week the controversy was in relation to a dispute between an estranged couple over whether their embryo could be implanted.

Mr Justice Fennelly remarked that it was “disturbing” that no legislative provisions have been made more than four years after the Report of the Commission on Assisted Reproduction. The legislature’s failure to act was insult to that commission, but then establishing commissions has often become a kind of cop-out for politicians. They supposedly wait for the commission’s report before acting, but then they frequently ignore the report once it is published.

Judges have the job of interpreting the Constitution and the laws that have already been enacted. If the legislation is not updated, it falls to the judiciary to decide what the people’s representatives intended.

This is often decried as the judiciary usurping the powers of government, but in such instances, the politicians are saddling the judiciary with the task of updating legislation. This contributes towards clogging up our courts.

Nobody elects judges, so the politicians are fobbing off their responsibility on the judiciary. This is a perversion of our democracy. Is dodging their responsibilities so wearing that the politicians now need an extra week’s holiday at Christmas?