Snakes alive and thriving under despicable law

I have just returned from Donegal where I interviewed a number of people not looking forward to today’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations.

While a coterie of politicians fly the flag and offer bowls of shamrock around the world and the rest of the populace gears up for the annual booze fest that celebrates our patron saint, there are some who cannot afford to look on from the sidelines.

They are “citizens” of this country who, driven out by the roller coaster that is the Irish economy, decided to try their luck in other countries. Some have travelled out from Ireland on more than one occasion in the last 20 years or so and have returned to discover that if they cannot find employment the State will turn its back.

They have fallen foul of the “habitual residence clause” in the social welfare provision. This heinous piece of legislation shepherded into law in 2004 by Mary Coughlan and designed to save the system from paying benefits to those from outside the EU is now a convenient stick with which to beat the unemployed who may have tarried too long abroad.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the people I spoke to tell of zealous investigation tactics by the Department of Social Protection. They speak of questions about cohabitation with ex-lovers, shopping habits (particularly if the interviewee lives along the border), reasons why the claimant left the country and why they came back.

One man told me that, after six months without any State support, he was asked to provide evidence of how he supported himself during that time. A 36-year-old woman explained how she had been asked to account for a year in which she was effectively a common law spouse. She was told to produce a letter from her former partner explaining where she lived and that he supported her during their relationship.!

Readers should note that the people I spoke to are in no way spongers. Most had third-level qualifications and are actively seeking work. What shocked me more is that this travesty of social justice is presided over by a Labour minister, Joan Burton. Has the Labour Party lost sight of its origins?!

There are hundreds of people experiencing degradation under this draconian ruling, it is time for it to end. It is said that the way to judge a country is by the way it treats its prisoners, what about how it treats its citizens in need? Clearly St Patrick didn’t drive all the snakes out of Ireland.

John O’Neill

Independent film maker

The Craft Village

Derry