Another Dole increase

L.T.P.

Limericks wrote: »

How about making people who take money from the state to go to college are made to work in Ireland for a period of time, hm??:rolleyes:

Are you going to create the jobs for them?

mad_shopaholic

all these schemes of cutting the dole for certain ages groups and proof of job seeking should have been done during the boom years when the career spongers were the only ones on the dole there would have been no excuse for them not to be working.

As for the internships they are slave labour to companies who otherwise might have hired someone if the scheme was not in place. Why cant the government offer the interships only in understaffed government departments such as hospitals etc which would give the people on the internship experience as well as the tax payers funding the interships a more efficient system with more staff!

Berty

mad_shopaholic wrote: »

all these schemes of cutting the dole for certain ages groups and proof of job seeking should have been done during the boom years when the career spongers were the only ones on the dole there would have been no excuse for them not to be working.

I think we did have the CE schemes and probably still have one or two floating around.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemployment_and_redundancy/employment_support_schemes/community_employment_scheme.html


During the boom

"Sur' they wont employ me because of my accent"
"Sur' they wont employ me because of my address"
"Sur' they wont employ me because of the school I went to"

During the current employment recession

"Sur' there's a recession on, I'll never get a job"

You cannot win. When I was out of work last year I was made to feel like a scrounger in Dominick Street. I was asked, 18 hours after losing my job, to provide proof I was looking for work. Yet there was a queue of 100 men at the desks(opposite) collecting money. I seriously doubt any of them were providing proof of seeking work.

Did you know that the Germans tried to ban social welfare recipients from gambling in the bookies. It didn't get them anywhere because the bookies said "It's cash, how do we know where they got the cash from" so the scheme didn't work out.

Resi12

LadyTBolt wrote: »

I do not agree that the new internship system is a joke.
For instance, you've recently left college as a qualified montessori teacher (example). You have the qualification but no work experience. You have two choices. You can pick up the dole and stay at home and wait for a fantastic paying job, or you can gain work experience which when a job does arise down the line you have the qualification and the experience to back it up.
I'd rather give a job to someone with a degree and some experience than somebody with just a degree.

I do understand some employers are taking advantage of it but in regards to the intern, which would be more self-satisfactory - sitting at home on the dole just because you have a degree and feel €238 is not enough pay for all the years you spent as a student or getting up off your back side day in day out to receive €238 and valuable work experience which you will not gain at home. I know what I'd do and I don't think it's a joke.

Yes, that's fine for recent graduates but I think the majority of people on the dole and in search of work are not in that situation.

To be honest recent graduates are the only people this serves, people who are already qualified wouldn't touch it and people not as qualified can't anyway. It's a terrible system that only caters to a small group, I guess it's something but I really think recent graduates would even move away first rather than work for such a minimum wage.

1huge1 wrote: »

You really are looking at it the wrong way, you make it sound like a punishment, these people are getting experience while they are on these internships, it gives them motivation, and it is good for both your physical and mental health to be working rather than being on social welfare.

At the end of the day people do have bills to pay no doubt, but not everything is about money.

Aren't people on these interships still technically on social welfare?

I wasn't calling the internships punishment, more so someone else's idea to make people on the dole wash Garda cars and fill potholes..

LadyTBolt

Beer Baron wrote: »

LadyTbolt.

Employers are abusing the internship programme.
While I'm here I suppose: With all the unemployed people in the country with a vast array of experience why, then, do we need Internships?

I know some employers are abusing the internship programme, I mentioned that in my post.

The internship programme gives people the opportunity to get up and gain experience. To show to prospective employers they did not just sit at home while they were unemployed, they got up and worked when the work was available.
I cannot begin to mention the amount of times I have heard people say that people on the dole should be out doing some sort of work instead of sitting at home. This scheme allows for that and they get an extra €50 p/wk.

How many people are on the dole and would like to gain skills/experience in something they never tried before because they felt there were so many people out there already with similar skills that they would never get the job if they applied for that? This scheme allows for that.

The downside to this programme is some employers will abuse it to a degree but the other side of coin, from a consumer point of view, is that if business XYZ can keep it's business open while reducing it's costs it is one more business open.

Every scheme has it's advantages and disadvantages.

I think this scheme will have more people benefiting from it than the number of people who are abusing it.

1huge1

Resi12 wrote: »

Aren't people on these interships still technically on social welfare?

I wasn't calling the internships punishment, more so someone else's idea to make people on the dole wash Garda cars and fill potholes..

Your missing my point if you think I was referring to a technicality.

I haven't heard about any of these internships involving washing Garda cars, but if they will gain experience and it will keep them in working ''mode'' then I am all for it.

Resi12

1huge1 wrote: »

Your missing my point if you think I was referring to a technicality.

I haven't heard about any of these internships involving washing Garda cars, but if they will gain experience and it will keep them in working ''mode'' then I am all for it.

I didn't miss your point, I know it is better to work (obviously) but if your on an internship your still on social welfare. I guess your earning it and that is something but your still on SW is all I am saying.

No, no.. I meant someone on here said anyone on the dole should be washing cars and filling potholes just because the fact they are on it anyway. It had nothing to do with internships and that's why I said the thing about being demeaned and that work seeming like punishment.

Poxyshamrock

How about something where businesses in a struggling city all agree to hire at least one more employee to try and get people off the live register! Couple of hundred shops hiring at least 1 person (more in the case of bigger stores/department stores) could make a big difference.

Call it Project One or something.

Kess73

Poxyshamrock wrote: »

How about something where businesses in a struggling city all agree to hire at least one more employee to try and get people off the live register! Couple of hundred shops hiring at least 1 person (more in the case of bigger stores/department stores) could make a big difference.

Call it Project One or something.

Nice idea. But the flipside is many stores are struggling to survive with the staff they have, so an extra wage could be the tipping point for many. I know of a few smallish businesses in the city centre who are hanging on by their fingernails and for whom the hiring of even one full timer on minimum wage could present the chance of other jobs there being at serious risk quickly if things did not pick up quickly.

Something like this could work only, imho of course, if the local authorities agreed to reduce rates in a significant manner for any stores that did this and who kept the staff on a full time basis. Maybe a two tier rate reduction programme would be a good start. The first tier being a flat rate reduction across the board within the city limits, and the second tier being a further reduction for every store that agreed to hire at least one person from the live register.

The authorities would lose out short term in terms of rate income, but the short to medium term advantage would be a number of new employees in the city centre who need to use car parks for their cars, who start buying food for lunch or daily papers in shops in town and so on. A busier town and more attractive rates may then attract some more businesses into the empty units in town and then the medium term could see the authorities making back the lost revenue through less empty units sitting idle.


Of course I know a much more detailed version of this idea, which took into account the finer fiscal details and the legal implications as existed at that time, was presented to a council member last year who replied that reducing rates was not needed as the work on Sarsfield street, william street and the Opera house (yes a few there are still trying to use this as some kind of proof of a turnaround:rolleyes:) would have businesses flocking to get into Limerick as well as people from other cities who would be coming to see the new street layouts. In other words the folk running the city have no idea what they are doing.

Berty

Poxyshamrock wrote: »

How about something where businesses in a struggling city all agree to hire at least one more employee to try and get people off the live register! Couple of hundred shops hiring at least 1 person (more in the case of bigger stores/department stores) could make a big difference.

Call it Project One or something.

There is a project like that based in Limerick. I'm on a different laptop so cant find it right now. Anyway the basicaly premise is that you agree to hire the person and they work for free BUT after 12 weeks YOU MUST give them a full time job unless they break the normal contract obligations that normal empoyees have during probation.

Kess73

Beer Baron wrote: »

There is a project like that based in Limerick. I'm on a different laptop so cant find it right now. Anyway the basicaly premise is that you agree to hire the person and they work for free BUT after 12 weeks YOU MUST give them a full time job unless they break the normal contract obligations that normal empoyees have during probation.

Yes but as anything that can be legally used as a probation excuse applies, then it is easy to get a person for free in for 12 weeks and then legally move them on when they time comes to hire them on a wage paying basis.

RonMexico

This is the result of bailing out the banks and turning to the IMF/EU for "help".

Austerity is going to last until 2015 and the way we are going I can see a lost decade ahead, similar to what happened in Japan.

110+ businesses have closed in Limerick in the past 18 months. Many many more are going to go to the wall in the coming months.

People have less and less disposable income and this is only going to get worse as taxes rise and social welfare is further reduced.

Graduates cannot be blamed if there are no jobs in their field. The only option for many is to emigrate.

Starting your own business in this climate is utterly insane due to the amount red tape, exorbitant rates and lack of a safety net if your business fails (you cannot get the dole).

The best advice I could give is to emigrate. I'll be leaving myself in the next 12 months. There is no future for me here and the quality of life in this country is only going to diminish in the decade ahead.

Kess73

RonMexico wrote: »

This is the result of bailing out the banks and turning to the IMF/EU for "help".

Austerity is going to last until 2015 and the way we are going I can see a lost decade ahead, similar to what happened in Japan.

110+ businesses have closed in Limerick in the past 18 months. Many many more are going to go to the wall in the coming months.

People have less and less disposable income and this is only going to get worse as taxes rise and social welfare is further reduced.

Graduates cannot be blamed if there are no jobs in their field. The only option for many is to emigrate.

Starting your own business in this climate is utterly insane due to the amount red tape, exorbitant rates and lack of a safety net if your business fails (you cannot get the dole).

The best advice I could give is to emigrate. I'll be leaving myself in the next 12 months. There is no future for me here and the quality of life in this country is only going to diminish in the decade ahead.

You bring up some very valid points, but when Limerick is looked at in detail, it is doing far worse than many of the other cities, and is certainly lagging behind in terms of the city/county councils reacting by reducing rates etc when compared to how their counterparts in Galway and Cork reacted.

A lot of Limerick's problems/failings are self inflicted as there are planners/councils/authorities who are simply not good at their jobs making decisions week after week, and avoiding any real issues.

Granted Limerick has always had a high level of unemplyment when compared to most of the rest of the country, but in recent years that has more than doubled again with the the amount of people unemplyed within the city limits now at the level of being 1 person in every 4 seeing as the city has a population of around 60,000 and there is now circa 15,000 unemployed.


The same level of unemployed folk and the same jump in new unemployment
simply has not happened in Galway, Cork etc within the city limits and those cities have managed to see growth. Serious questions should be asked why Limerick crumbled so badly and also as to why it was ignored at local and national level, and also as to how the same people can keep their jobs despite failing so badly in their roles.

RonMexico

Kess73 wrote: »

You bring up some very valid points, but when Limerick is looked at in detail, it is doing far worse than many of the other cities, and is certainly lagging behind in terms of the city/county councils reacting by reducing rates etc when compared to how their counterparts in Galway and Cork reacted.

A lot of Limerick's problems/failings are self inflicted as there are planners/councils/authorities who are simply not good at their jobs making decisions week after week, and avoiding any real issues.

Granted Limerick has always had a high level of unemplyment when compared to most of the rest of the country, but in recent years that has more than doubled again with the the amount of people unemplyed within the city limits now at the level of being 1 person in every 4 seeing as the city has a population of around 60,000 and there is now circa 15,000 unemployed.


The same level of unemployed folk and the same jump in new unemployment
simply has not happened in Galway, Cork etc within the city limits and those cities have managed to see growth. Serious questions should be asked why Limerick crumbled so badly and also as to why it was ignored at local and national level, and also as to how the same people can keep their jobs despite failing so badly in their roles.

Yes that is very true indeed. Limerick is an unemployment blackspot. I have a feeling that it is going to be ignored as it was in the past.

Azhrei

SarahBeep! wrote: »

I'd rather hop on a plane than stand in a dole queue. How many people are letting their skills go to waste??

Yes, because the majority are doing it on purpose. Who wouldn't want to survive on the pittance that is the dole? :rolleyes:

savagecabbages

To be honest i'd rather someone leave the country to find work than stay here on the dole feeling sorry for themselves waiting for the economy to pick back up.

A graduate with 5 years working experience returning to Ireland is worth a lot more to the country than one who has been supported on social welfare for the same 5 years, while not gaining any experience in whatever field of work they qualified in.

Resi12

savagecabbages wrote: »

To be honest i'd rather someone leave the country to find work than stay here on the dole feeling sorry for themselves waiting for the economy to pick back up.

A graduate with 5 years working experience returning to Ireland is worth a lot more to the country than one who has been supported on social welfare for the same 5 years, while not gaining any experience in whatever field of work they qualified in.

Any graduate with 5 years experience abroad is not coming back here. I mean why would they?

Also, the economy needs to be picked back up for jobs to actually get created to get the dole numbers down to a good amount. Even if people can get jobs today it is few and far between.

savagecabbages

I'm talking about people graduating RIGHT NOW, who face a choice:

Stay here on social welfare making the problem worse...
or
Leave the country, get some life/work experience and come back in a few years.

SarahBeep!

Azhrei wrote: »

Yes, because the majority are doing it on purpose. Who wouldn't want to survive on the pittance that is the dole? :rolleyes:

I never said it was happening on purpose. How about builders/carpenters/electricians volunteer for community projects so they're not totally outta practice WHEN a job offer does come along?

sm124

To be fair I understand the type of people Sarah is talking about. For example one person I know, who spent the whole 4 years of their degree pissing about drinking and doing **** all, who came out with a pass degree, is now on the dole, the effort to find a job was I went to a careers fair and there was nothing there. No intention to further the education which was recieved, which unfortunately is a neccesity nowadays. But the thing that really gets me is that this person spends the majority of their time going out, spending money that isn't even deserved as they have never had a job in the first place. For example one comment on Facebook that has annoyed me so much since reading, was about how this person finally got their dole and couldn't wait to go shopping in Pennys. I personally believe the vast majority of us have no problem with people who are unlucky enough to have lost their jobs, claiming dole until they find something, as in my eyes, they have paid their taxes and are entitled to it in their time of need. but people like this who are simply scroungers and nothing but disgusting. Who shouldn't even be entitled to benefits. I didn't get a job from my degree straight off, so I'm working my menial labour job to pay my own way and going on to further my education so I can help myself get a job. as are so many others around the country. There are jobs out there, for example Macdonalds and the fast food chains seem to constantly be looking for work, but people still have the mentality of before and won't do it. Then they blame the foreigners for taking our jobs. No matter what you do, there will ALWAYS be a group of people that spend their lives making excuses and have no problem in taking what they don't deserve. Solve the situation? Stop giving people like that money, do it like in America, give them food stamps and leave it at that.

gaf1983

mad_shopaholic wrote: »

As for the internships they are slave labour to companies who otherwise might have hired someone if the scheme was not in place. Why cant the government offer the interships only in understaffed government departments such as hospitals etc which would give the people on the internship experience as well as the tax payers funding the interships a more efficient system with more staff!

Good idea. Many of government departments could do with the extra manpower to help make them more efficient, look at the delays in the passport office for example, and I even heard a SIPTU official during the week whining on behalf of his FÁS workers (the ones who want to hold onto their 70 days annual leave during their 2 years leading up to retirement) that their workload has increased substantially since the recessions. Why not give them a few interns to help speed their processes up?

Beer Baron wrote: »

Did you know that the Germans tried to ban social welfare recipients from gambling in the bookies. It didn't get them anywhere because the bookies said "It's cash, how do we know where they got the cash from" so the scheme didn't work out.

Could that problem be solved by giving people part-payment in food/clothing/other essential vouchers and part-payment in cash? Or maybe stick with cash payments but require all people to show an ID going into bookies, and if they're receiving benefits, have them on a database of people barred from betting? Obviously this brings in issues of restricting people's liberties...

Berty

I dunno gaf1983.

People on benefits do get things in non cash form as well. Only yesterday I had a tooth pulled for €80. The guy before me was signing the medical card form for the receptionist also for getting a tooth pulled. So thats €80 he received for having "benefits". Had that man only being receiving, lets say, €186 per week then he would only have €106 per week left for whatever he needs to pay for.

On matters of health I would prefer to see my taxes helping people just like that but when you pass a bookies or off license on "dole day" you think "why do we even fvcking bother?"

RE: Interns, Government departments, FAS retirement annual leave entitlements and anything else related to efficiencies or inefficiencies in the offices.

The problem is and always was the existence of Trade Unions.

Passport office was a "Work to Rule" and was staff and trade unions throwing toys out of the pram to get what they wanted. Closing the doors to the public at 1pm to process applications should have meant the passports were processed quicker. Oddly enough the process slowed down.

Providing MORE staff to already badly run government departments/semi states and quangos is simply "pissing into the wind".

fleabag

This is a great thread and fair play to the OP for setting it up. I moved to Limerick a year ago from Kerry to go to LIT (after being made redundant in 2009) and was a bit dubious at first but I have to say I love Limerick, think it's a great city with a nice vibe and I'm sad to see it lagging behind other places.

One of the iniatives that really seems to be working is the revitalisation of the Milk Market - on a Saturday it's packed with people out enjoying theselves and spending and now I notice they're trying the Friday Flea, not to mention the Thursday Craft Market. The market also has evening opening hours which is a great idea and something that tourists from the continent would be used to anyway.

I'd love to see this being made into a really first class market with the advantage of evening opening hours and with a virtually weather-proof canopy so that it could go on all year round. Sometimes there are a good few empty stalls which is always a sad sight at a market - wouldn't the owners be better of offering all stalls at cheaper rates or even free say for a month to get people started off? If the market was marketed properly you'd even have people travelling to Limerick for it and farmer's markets and the like have actually increased in the last two years.

And in the same vein why don't the owners of empty shops let them free of charge for a few months to help potential retailers get a leg up? A lot of art students from LSAD seem to avail of this for temporary exhibitions and it's great to see the shops being used for something. It's a shame this couldn't be done on a wide scale - sort of like the 'pop up shops' that are all the rage in trendy circles now.

Berty

fleabag wrote: »

And in the same vein why don't the owners of empty shops let them free of charge for a few months to help potential retailers get a leg up? A lot of art students from LSAD seem to avail of this for temporary exhibitions and it's great to see the shops being used for something. It's a shame this couldn't be done on a wide scale - sort of like the 'pop up shops' that are all the rage in trendy circles now.

No and here is why.

IF these landlords buildings get sucked into NAMA they are written down on the value of their current rents. I don't know the equation used to calculate the value against the rate of rent but there wont be a landlord who will let a buildling out for lets says €500 a week when it used to go for €2,000.

This is why agents were offering rents for 3 months free IF you took an 18 month contract.

osarusan

gaf1983 wrote: »

Could that problem be solved by giving people part-payment in food/clothing/other essential vouchers and part-payment in cash? Or maybe stick with cash payments but require all people to show an ID going into bookies, and if they're receiving benefits, have them on a database of people barred from betting? Obviously this brings in issues of restricting people's liberties...

As was mentioned before, this would be getting into curtailing individual freedoms.
Not only that, but if the bookies are off-limits for those on social welfare, surely the pub should be too. How about jewelry shops?

Putting these kinds of restrictions on individuals' right to spend their money would result in a list of places considered out of bound which, if fair, would have to include any kind of 'non-necessary' spending.

daisyscience

I thought that it was great that FAS is rebranding, even though thats not what they want to call it and they dont want us to see it that way. I went into their offices after finishing my degree, unable to find work like many others, and I was told to keep doing what I was doing as I was over qualified for any of their courses.

You cant qualify for Back To Education Alowance to do a Masters and on the dole, I cant save enough money to pay my way through college myself (having built up debts im still paying off whilst in college despite working several jobs). Ive never gotten the BTEA and when I was in college other mature students were getting it and the full grant aswell, thankfully they stopped that. It used to drive me nuts!!!!

Im too qualified for most of the jobs I apply for and havn't managed to get one interview despite sending out tonnes of CVs. The jobs in my area of degree that i do apply for are going to people with PHds and again, i dont even get to interview stage. I have started lying on my cv and pretending that I dont have half the exerience that I have so fingers crossed.

Of course leaving the country is a tempting option but my home is here. Meanwhile my state subsidised education is wasting away along with my faith in the system, Im sure im not the only one. It was a waste of time and money for myself, the lecturers etc. Sure theyre practically just training people to be on the dole or leave the country at this stage!!!

While getting a good education is important, I dont understand why they are still trying to encourage people to study on courses where there are no jobs. They talk about training people, upskilling etc in places like FAS but how many people like me are there out there??? Theres a shortagate of doctors, well why dont they offer people like me scholarships to become one and have to work for the state for a certain amount of years??? It shouldnt be easy, but the options should be there. Make people work hard for it to further their education, the current system is just too easy and seems like another thoughtless way to keep people busy and off the dole for another while.

daisyscience

Saying all the above id forgotten that I had applied for a part time course with Springboard and just got confirmation that ive gotten it, yay! It if in an area where there are jobs and I am also furthering my education. Sorry about the negative rant. Im much more optimistic now about getting off the dole and hopefully Springboard will help many others too.

LB6

SarahBeep! wrote: »

Jobs like that would soon get rid of the lazy people and make them get up and start looking for a job.

Don't be tarring everyone on the dole queue with the same "lazy" brush. Some - ok most - of them are there by design, the minority are there against their better wishes.

PG you won't have to join the dole queue and be considered LAZY!

Insect Overlord

To be fair, I don't for a minute believe Sarah was tarring everyone on the dole with the same brush. It should be obvious that her post was giving out about the people who are scrounging and playing the system, not the many decent people who are looking for work.

SarahBeep!

LB6 wrote: »

Don't be tarring everyone on the dole queue with the same "lazy" brush. Some - ok most - of them are there by design, the minority are there against their better wishes.

PG you won't have to join the dole queue and be considered LAZY!

I know people who are on the dole that have worked hard all their lives and now find themselves down on their luck through no fault of their own. I know people who are on the dole who have never even typed up a CV.

Of course there are people who don't want to be on the dole, I was out of work, on and off, for six months last year (I wasn't claiming because I'm a full time student) and it ablsolutly killed me!! I've been working since I was 14 and if I had to spend a long period of time on the dole I'd rather go out and sweep the streets because then I'd feel like I'd earned it and I know people my age who would say the same.

I also know people who would quite happily stay on the dole till the day they die, and they were on the dole loooooooooooong before times were hard.