Interesting how the neoliberal spinmeisters are increasingly frontloaded into pre-emptive mode before the topic hits the screen.

But then, they have foreknowledge of release dates on these reports, and as good little scouts their pencils are always pre-pared.

You have a point, but if the rate was 15% even if the boom, there must be something else going on here also.

there might be something else going on alright… a recession?

Something else

a blueshirt on spin cycle.

The recession can be held responsible for the rise from 15% to 22% between 2007 and 2012, sure. But what was causing 15% up to 2007 if it’s double other countries’ rate?

What was causing the 15%?

Lawyers, damned lawyers, and statisticians.

You know, the ones that distract you from the half million idle and 100,000 emigrating while their incomes GROW with irrelevant decoys into side topics and nit-picking the victims as they negotiate the terms of our national re-enslavement for a consideration.
a.k.a. spinmeisters on paTroll.

Exactly. Proves the point that there are people who just won’t work and welfare officers don’t check to make sure that they are looking for work. I fully accept that there are people who can’t work – but its not 15% of families. These cases should be checked out and the dole should be reduced over time to eradicate this.

very easy to find out aswell, just check the records of who was signing on during the boom period. there are probably genuine cases included in that percentage but id say the vast majority of them are career dolers

It’s all about votes

It includes pensioners. Do the math.

You did read the part about “unemployment, illness, disability and age”. Throw in people who are going to 3rd level and people who are temporarily out of a job and you would get a much better picture, The average unemployment rate in 2007 was about 4.6% whereas now it’s 14.8%. Make of the figures what you will but this idea that everyone on the dole is a scrounger is pure bullshit. Of course “the ordinary Joe” with a job would have to come down off the cross and realize that the people on the dole today sure as hell didn’t gladly volunteer for it.

On paTroll, Toorkee??

Kick the lone parent and disabled so no-one notices your blueshirt bosses selling us to the international scammers society for fiscal rectitude in neoliberal heaven for all eternity.

If we melted down the brass in half your neck we could clear the national debt before lunch.
And ylou are the ordinary joe?Which building site were you let go from?

…and no lone parent works Damien, what illness category does it fall under? Do enlighten…

…also, nice of you Damien to join the debate so late in the afternoon….yet another duvet day? You like those, don’t you?

The lone parents sank the economy, toorkeel?
I happen to have been that lone parent working part time when I could get it, and know others.

Do elaborate. How many kids have you raised flying solo?

Early ad hominem diversions today toorkee?

Play the man eh?

Also nice to know its tu fein that is hosting the debate.

Are those your highest debating standards.

No wonder our democracy is screwed.

“and no lone parent works Damien” ????? i personally know several lone parents that work, what planet are you on?

Planet O’Duffy.

Hang on Damien….I’ll just get this violin tuned….I never said Lone Parents sank the economy, maybe you can highlight where I did. The point I was making was that there was15% of homes jobless during the boom when there was employment for everyone. I am aware that the figure includes people with disabilities etc….but if you were working part time you weren’t one of those 15% were you? Or were you working for cash and defrauding the State? I have a lot respect for Lone parents, I know many and have huge respect for those who work and rear a child/children. It’s not easy. I also know many wasters who are lone parents who wouldn’t work to warm themselves…unfortunately their kids will be the same…it all boils down to work ethic I suppose and how you are reared…

Spot on, Conor. Paragraph 3 states that specifically.

Keep fiddling on your viola, Toorkee

I ain’t nibbling your herring. Try Enda.

Ethics is a biggger subject than ‘work’. Look it up. Its your missing link.

@Toorkeel. I would hazard an educated guess here, but I think your stats quoted above are wrong. There was less than 4% unemployment during the boom. ??.

I think you just answered the question..congratulations…even when the country was full to bursting….you “couldn’t” work….interesting, ethics is bigger than work…if we all had that attitude…who would support you? As Anne Robinson might say….You are the 15%….Goodbye!

You and anney should get together and make up a threesome, torkee

With your doughnut.

Ta do la thart.

there is always roughly 5% unemployment in any successful and stable economy giver or take, its considered to be 100% employment

Seamus, I am well aware of what the unemployment figure was during the “Boom” and you are right it was about 4%. The figure of 15% of homes jobless during the Boom years was stated by the ESRI today. If you read this article or listened to the radio today you would see that’s what we are talking about..

Damien….Ha, I have to say you make me chuckle with your “witty” off the cuff remarks, very sharp….you are always good for a giggle, I suppose you have plenty of time on your hands to keep churning them out…it explains why maybe you have a hairy orange coat…to keep you warm, you’ll hardly warm yourself working son….keep on trucking!

@Toorkeel, in college doing my finals what were you doing that you had time to read newspapers and listen to the radio. Productivity was a priority in your world today eh ???.

Seamus…Working nights as it happens, young kids, early start, double shift I suppose you could call it, wife working…The joys of the modern age! Studying for your Finals, best of luck, seriously, I don’t know you but all the best in that regard. However, since you took time out and commented on this article, I take it you read it. It would appear you didn’t read it correctly as your initial reply was completely off topic. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake in the Exam Hall…I am sure you wouldn’t fancy repeating in August. #Tip: Read the Question Carefully.

@Toorkeel, point noted. you were right. Nights are a killer, know your pain done plenty over the summer. As for repeating , our repeats would be Dec 2013. Also, a factor not mentioned above is ones age. For insurance purposes, much harder for anyone in their forties who is unskilled and doesn’t have a third level education to gain meaningful employment.

Toorkee works so hard all night he can stay up all day creating ad hominem smokescreens for his adored Enda.

The level of your returns, t, indicate the bankruptcy of your intelligence, your ethics, and your neoliberal monetarist mindset.
Not unlike FG and their pink-collar on the blueshirt civil partners in callous treachery against the Irish people.
Mercenary hirelings. What exactly do you do all night, toorkee, gobble the management in preparation for your Christmas stuffing?

Damien…you are up early, or is it a case you haven’t gone to bed yet…those Mao boxsets are a killer! Again, this is yesterdays news. I will leave you now to wallow. If this conversation keeps going you might report me to the Journal….smell you later….

Slink away lamebrain.

Jobs are the false simplistic solution they will dangle like a carrot.
Productivity has exploded exponentially over the last century, due to technologies, time and motion study techniques on production methods, and general, pressures on the working producers of the wealth the mega-rich cream off in ever more gluttonous ladles. Working hours have shrunk negibly.
The polarisation of wealth and poverty continued through the boom, masked by cheap credit and the delusion fed to all that they too could be little property-capitalists.
Think again. Half a milion, and growing, idle; 100,000 emigrating p.a. Its already BROKE. You will not fix it with the stupidity that caused it.
They do say insanity is repeating the same behaviour and expecting a different result. There are no tigers in the long grass. Just the same wuncha snake-eyed white-collar bankers. They brought you famine in the 19th century, they will bring it again. But, as ever, it will not be for shortage of food. The incomes of our richest continue to expand, as they do in Greece, where people are already feeding from the garbage. The wealth, created by the workers, has been offshored. European solidarity??All in it together?Some are more in it than others.

Dont worry, it will be ignored and wont get much coverage, like Pat Rabittes comments yesterday about how lying pre election is cool.

Disgusting
Adebayo

Phat Maggotte?

Culture of welfare?

You mean like higher civil servants and overpaid politicos, or multiple-bonus, golfing deal-making players, in cahoots with golden circles at the nineteenth?

Funny how a lone parent upsets people more than an Anglo scam. No wonder our politics is a musical chairs society of flatulent gasbags. Gombeenation once again…Ireland, brief a nation, now a province once again.

The blueshirts never rest from scapegoating their victims. If brains were dynamite they couldn’t blow their nose.

@ Damien – Is no one allowed to question people on the dole so? Is it an untouchable area? I’m sure that most, if not all commenting here are disgusted with politicians, bankers etc. I know I am. But does that mean that we can’t question the work ethics of a small population of people on the dole (not everyone on the dole)? You can’t question both? Tell me one person living here that isn’t annoyed about Anglo. If this article was about Anglo we’d have hundreds commenting – we currently have 18 comments in 2 hours. Hardly more people getting upset about “lone parents” than the Anglo scam.
I think people feel annoyed that they are being ripped of at both ends. A small population of politicians, bankers civil servants at the top and a small population of people on the dole (again – not everyone on the dole).

@John

Cui bono?
Who benefits from us kicking the Traveller, the immigrant worker, the refugee, the lone parent, the disabled, and the very few ‘who don’t want to work’?
Its deliberate PR smokescreenery, long practised and subtly refined through skyscrapers of graduated econometricians.
Pickpockets do the same decoy tricks at the other fairgrounds. They usually dont sport clean nails, polished haircuts, fine tailoring and educated accents.
Who sank the ship?The crooked skipper and his crew still creaming it on the lecture circuit, or the prisoners in the hold being dragged on deck here for a public flogging?
The lone parents(I was one of those, it aint a phukking luxury life)or the overpaid departmental secretaries who prepared the paperwork.
Cui bono?

So to summaries, No, we can’t question anyone on the dole?

As someone on the dole, I can assure you we are interrogated, harassed, inconvenienced, insulted, handicapped when we try to get on courses monopolised by cliques(often of double-jobbing political buddies), reduced to conditions where competing for the shrinking(and austerity-strangled) few jobs left is no slice of cake. Nor am I without either experience or education.

To be scapegoated for a mess I was told to ‘go and commit suicide’ for forecasting amounts to just one more bucket of water off my waterproof back.

BUT IT WILL CONTRIBUTE SWEET PHUKK ALL TO SOLVING THE PROBLEM.
Quite the opposite. It hinders any viable solution.
But go ahead, vent your spleen on the vulnerable. Its so much easier than studying the background ROT.

So if you are working part time occasionally where you can get it ( as you say somewhere else in this thread) and you are applying for courses, you are clearly NOT the type of person we are talking about. I am not attacking the vulnerable, I have clearly stated that there are many people on the dole who deserve it and need help ( my girlfriend was very recently made redundant and is on the dole). I am questioning the fact that there seem to be a small portion of people that have no interest in making a living off the dole.
Why does this help? It brings in fairness. I will know that my tax money goes to those who need it, which I have no problem with, not those who choose to stay on the dole. It means that this money saved can go to other things like schools, public transport and the poor bondholders (joking!!). I want fairness all through government in the way they use tax money to pay welfare and in other ways they use the money. Then I will have no gripes.

Sound, John.

But the point is that that while you are examining critically the flake of paint that is the occasional dole-wringer, the culprits who crashed the bus are wheeling away barrowloads of booty from the trunk, and laughing at you scrutinising their fabricated decoy.
Its part of their cynical ‘game’.

My kids are not following my pattern by emigrating because they despise Ireland, any more than I spent most of my working life abroad for that reason. Its because the country is run by cartels of clever crooks who despise honesty and fear intelligence. It is a culture of polite, educated gangsterism. Thats why our thoroughbred racehorses have better medical facilities than the general public, and their subsidised aristocrats of the turf greet them at the racetents for the real ‘business’ of government.

Today’s, Independent, 6 gardai turn up at a woman’s house at 3am to collect a €250 fine. Yet not one banker, crooked politician, or the previous regulator will see a prison cell.

Attacking welfare as Damien said is pure and utter smokescreen to deflect attention away from the real parasites in our society .Ireland is still very much regarded as a crooked country to do business in. Losing Billions in investments because of it. The rise of extreme right wing attitudes in this country is worrying.

Furthermore, the only reason we have a welfare system is Folks is to protect the poor from the excesses of the rich and the huge cock ups they do make. Example in history , the wall street crash . And our present state of affairs which was caused by whom ?? no not the social welfare, yeh the rich again and our f…n government caved into f..n big time gamblers who lost .

But hey lets keep blaming social welfare for everything.

The same applies to interests groups like Ruhama, etc. They receive government funding too.

what a moronic comment, i suppose the aa should be scrapped too? i hope no daughter or son of yours ever gets coerced into prostitution

Yeah, lets scrap all research and feedback from reality…then we can run a modern 21st century society on …. …prayers.