What now for the unemployed in Ireland?

Ashley Dobia Mwanza

Could the Lisbon treaty be facing a second round ‘bashing’? Could we be facing more protests? The country’s largest public-service trade union IMPACT was quick to point out that the Government should ignore the recommendation contained in the McCarthy report published yesterday. It's cuts all the way, totalling €5,3 billion.

It is those who are living on welfare payouts who will have a lot to say, they are the most vulnerable and hradest hit too.The timing of the publication was no doubt mistimed, "Bord Snip Nua" recommended that government should cut Social Welfare payments, it had been rumoured that the government won't announce that until after the Lisbon Referendum because they won't want 400 thousand voting against Lisbon on a protest vote. Well what now? Yes it’s not the government that made the announcement but it’s a publication of possibilities. The media has been singing that Ireland is up the creek without a paddle from our Taoiseach, and then now this. On the streets some who are surviving on welfare payouts made their anger felt by talking about it openly and bemoaning what they called the ‘ludicrous’ government.

“Given the continuing fall in prices, the report says the general cut in social welfare allowances would bring the value of payments back to the level seen in the summer 2008,” Irish Times.

However, many of the recommendations of the McCarthy Committee will impact on the poor.

“The committee will,” Mr Lenihan said in the Irish Times, “be able to hear the opinions of all those affected by the independent report’s recommendations.” The one thing about this committee is that it is not independent. According to Paul Sweeny, it was carefully selected by the Mandarins in Finance (who should have undertaken the work themselves… though one can see the advantage of outsourcing the manufacture of bitter pills), because all of its members are very conservative. As Vincent Browne has repeatedly said, none of them have a record of the promotion of equality or equity. So it will hear, but it does not have to listen.

At first reading, there is one major criticism of the report. First, is the lack of an economic analysis of the impact of the report. This is particularly surprising from a report chaired by an economist. The reason there was no economic analysis of the impact of the report is that the extent of the proposals are so potentially deflationary that it may lead to a downward spiral in economic activity, delaying economic growth for some time.

It’s interesting to see where we go from here...