Jobs initiative - A first step on a long, hard road

EVERY day that passes the scale of the economic challenge facing us becomes, if you are the kind to fret, ever more unsettling.

Sadly and frustratingly yesterday’s Government jobs initiative can only do so much to assuage those concerns or reverse deeply worrying unemployment figures that would, at nearly 450,000, be even more startling if not for the safety valve of emigration.

For a short while there was a sense of expectation swirling around yesterday’s announcement that was unrealistic. As Micheál Martin pointed out the wishful thinking that so often befuddles us was encouraged by Fine Gael’s pre-election promises to create 100,000 jobs. Even then — and how long ago all that seems already — that promise seemed an impossible overreach. It is even more sharply undermined as the budget for this initiative — €500 million — seems unequal to the task but the sober reality is that’s all that’s available. That it is funded in part through the imposition of a levy on private pension funds will leave a bitter taste amongst those trying to rebuild devastated retirement savings.