Some people on here are being very harsh and unrealistic about some of our “long term unemployed”. I used to work teaching ECDL to people who were on the dole more than 6 months. Some of the people were in their 50′s and I remember one man who had worked as a carpenter or plumber (I can’t remember which). He had been working since he was 11 years old and couldn’t really read or write. He was forced to retrain or lose his meagre benefits. I remember how much he struggled and how down he was on himself because he quite simply couldn’t get through the course.

I just remember thinking that we were wasting that man’s time and treating him terribly, he had contributed to this country for over 40 years and had to demean himself for a pittance every week. That spot could have gone to a younger welfare recipient with more of a chance of passing the course and possibly finding a job afterwards.

Who would actually hire someone his age in an IT role? It was beyond ridiculous but he had to do it and I felt so sorry for him. The welfare were just looking for any reason to stop his payment.

Considering that our unemployment rate was very low during the boom times, it’s pretty weird that some people seem to be oblivious to the fact that the economy almost collapsed abs attribute the sudden spike in joblessness to a ln epidemic of laziness!

Given that benefits / allowances were more generous and easier to apply for during the boom years and very few people took them, it would actually imply that Irish residents are generally people who want jobs and take them when they are available!

I think we need to be careful not to just photocopy right wing, Tory Party policies like these.

We need jobs rather than incentives to work! If you start booting people off the dole and there aren’t jobs there, you’ll just put them into dire poverty.

Its not the unemployed that need to be monitored,its the goverment their the ones milking the system

Maybe when we have a goverment with some morals.
Self confessed liars should not be spying on ordinary citizens.

what jobs? More slight of hand to disguise the ineptitude of governments by implying the unemployed are responsible for the current situation…

sure. let them put a camera in everyone’s jacks and all while they’re at it.

amazing the grilling people are willing to give people at the lower levels of state recipiency. what about the people at the top – huge salaries, benefits, pensions and expenses? and the banks we are bailing out? way to keep the attention off their dubious way of life.

if they’re going to get stringent on this – money people actually need to live on day to day, then let them get stringent across the board.

the Malthusian ethic of ‘justify your existence’ is depressing and pervasive. you don’t see animals worrying about whether they are financially well off enough to go on living.

I like to see human beings being productive and creative, and having a discipline, but the paradigm of the regimented, routine wage slave – the ‘job’ (ie ‘Just Above Broke’) ought to be on the way out imo (unless you happen to like that, and some people do). justifying your right to food, property, the supporting of a family, and the paying of bills by spending the majority of your week (and your entire life in which you have the ability and vitality for it) working most likely for something you have no relationship with or connection to beyond that financial need is madness.

the elite owners of this society know that feature of the psyche, and they play the lower classes off against each other in this kind of resentment and pressure towards those that don’t buy into it. self-policing, so that less coercion is needed from the top. evidence of it on this thread.

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, they’d only make a pure shit of it here in this country and at €244,000 to build our governments websites it would be a complete waste of money!!

Too easy to fake your search activity. It’s just making you sign online.
Waste of money.

Why don’t they provide an online list of jobs in each locality, and employ people who are on the live register the longest. Social welfare isn’t a choice for the majority of people, they aspire to a better standard of living, but there is a minority who don’t want to work, and this system simply won’t do anything for them. The site would encourage that minority to give a half arsed attempt at finding a job via Google search and would justify their status as they’ve “tried” to find a job. It’s simply an online checklist open to abuse, so, no, it’d never work here. Rant over!!

*Merely an opinion, and I realise I might be wrong*

Big brother is watching ..what if ur looking for Work in the porn industry

waste of money as there are no jobs and this will be used as an excuse to put people into further poverty.

OMG what next ,Most people that have no job would give there back teeth for any kind of job ,,just a real shame that in the past few years ,our wonderfull goverment bleeped up our country ,,so now lets screw up the people that CANT find work out there ,,Think this country should have a bit of respect for the wemon /men that are really trying every day going out looking for work ,,Iknow iam one of them ,Thank u ,,MERRY CHRISTMAS

Daft Idea, are they going to train all these people how to use a computer also? even in this modren age of computers and smartphones ect not everyone has one or wants one or knows how to use one, my own Dad would be hard pressed to find the power button, he’s a proud 12:00 flasher and I could never see him change his ways.

Its hard enough as it is to get onto social welfare, next they’ll be demanding blood samples and finger prints

really in 2 minds, while i think that they need to tackle some long term unemoyed who have never and will never work, they also need to realise t
hat many people are down and would do anything for a job. This may not be effective with all jobseekers as some may not be computer savvy

This nonsense is all about deflecting attention from those really responsible for the economic mess – the elites, political leaders etc. – onto the victims of their policies.

The reality is that +if+ the jobs are available, generally at least 98% of the workforce will take them, no question.

Yes, that leaves around 2%, what of those?

They are Ireland’s (& all countries’) official ‘Mental Health Policy’. That is, dump them on the dole & forget about them.

Those working in the ignored, completely underfunded ‘society couldn’t give a sh1t’ area of mental health services will know exactly what I mean.

Proper care, ie actually applying therapy, rather than stupifying drugs, costs money – money that no-one wants to spend. In fact no-one wants to even acknowledge the existence of mental health issues, unless victims are so incapacitated that they cannot survive outside a residential institution, and even then…..

So, if the rest can just about get by, by themselves, they’re on their own. Chances of getting a job? Often virtually nil.

So now you know, our societies aren’t full of perfect specimens.

Of course, the kind of blame the victim mentality, the neo-liberal narrative of (voluntary) ‘winners’ & ‘losers’, everyone has perfect equal opportunity & chooses the life they have…yada yada ad nauseam…’personal responsibility’ blah…blah. Sure, if I can rise to the dizzy heights of multi-millionaire banking fraudster or politician con man, surely we all can?

Well, no. Not quite like that is it?

Study upon study – frankly by now, what should be ‘statement of the bleedin obvious’, were it not for the well remunerated propaganda of those for whom society works just fine, thank you – upon study…shows that wealth & opportunity ‘stratify’, as do health outcomes (mental & physical), as does educational achievement, as does employment opportunity etc. etc.

Poverty & life chances are generationally self-perpetuating. And the worst factor for poverty is…..lack of job opportunity.

And the absolute +best+ our country has ever done with this is get the ‘dump’ tally down to 1 in 20 – ie ~ a 5% shortage of jobs. And that’s ‘official’ figures. Thru’ most of our history it’s been much higher. What a waste – for both the individuals’ lives blighted across the generations by this, and for society as a whole.

A waste that is, except for the top few percent, which includes all those who run society, for whom, with fat salaries, comfortable ‘investment’ portfolios and golden pensions, it doesn’t make much odds at all.

What we should ALL have copped on to by now, after the last 5 years, is that virtually NONE of the elites in positions of power & control are actually representing the interests of the vast majority of citizens. Arguably, except on very rare occasions, they NEVER HAVE.

FACT – there is no reason whatever that we cannot have a society (yes, a ‘mixed’ public/private capitalist economy, as now) where +anyone+ need be involuntarily unemployed. Period.

There is simply no incentive whatever for the powers that be to achieve such a society – and that’s why, after the banking sector crashed the economy by running a Pyramid/Ponzi scheme, there has been no accountability, no change & no admissions of responsibility. Far less, actually questioning the +system+ that incentivised the mess.

Searchable Daft.ie type website for jobs would be easy to set up and use for those employing (letting) and employees (Renters). But the opposition political and media will not favour any ACTUAL solution under someone else’s watch.

Not everyone has access to Internet @ home ????? So pretty stupid idea

What’s this “There are no jobs”, 85% of people are employed, they have jobs.

They need to give some long term dolers an incentive to get a job, this may be a way to do it…..

How can these unemployed people afford to be online? They don’t have the money for broadband or computers and anyway they’re too busy out there looking die jobs…

We need to see evidence people are looking how well rejection letters or emails etc. There are people abusing the system not all though.

Orwell’s 1984

silly idea.
Unless every job in the country has to be advertised on it. Its a waste of time the FAS site or what ever it is now does not carry most jobs advertised so where is the point.

Jobs advertised in all manner of ways, radio, newspaper, word of mouth, internet is the government going to monitor the use of these as well.

where are the poll results??

It’s a great idea. It would sort the genuine jobseekers from the sponges who have no intention of ever working.