SIGNING ON:There is hope, but for too many it exists only outside Ireland – while those who remain are reported on but rarely asked their opinion
BESIDES HIS wife (naturally), and his Romanian professor friend (unsurprising, given the latters impoverished, Ceaucescu-era background and its by-product of innate stoicism), the people who best understand his predicament are his sister and her husband.
They too have been hit hard – negative equity, overseas investments (made on the back of a far too easily topped up mortgage) that went belly-up over the course of a single summer, regular freelance work that dried up without warning only to return, sporadically, at reduced rates. But they too are resilient.
They have not only trained themselves (as has he) to curtail dreams, but have long since dispensed with ego and associated notions of what university-educated, aspirational, upper middle-class parents would have deemed, at least pre-recession, “suitable employment”. They have re-grouped and re-trained so many times it has become a running joke between the unemployed man and his brother in law: ‘So, what Fás courses are you doing this month?’
***
But it hasn’t always been funny. He has seen the panic sometimes, and the fear, and the dark rims under his brother-in-laws’s eyes. Some days they allow one another to vent, briefly, at the lack of response from employers to their pitches and CVs. Some days they engage in gallows humour as they help one another when their paint-faded, €500 bangers pack in.
Sometimes they laugh at the number of degrees and masters the four parents hold between them. Sometimes, however, the unemployed man won’t laugh, especially when he texts to ask how a job interview went, and his brother in law texts back:
“OQ. OTH.”
(Over-qualified, over the hill).
***
There is hope. But for too many it exists only outside Ireland. His brother-in-law has been offered a full-time job. In Italy. This is the best (and, from the grandparents perspective, worst) news in years. The competition was intense, and the confidence that the job offer bolsters in his brother-in-law is wonderful. His brother-in-law sends a text: “I sincerely hope my good fortune is contagious . . .”
***
Maybe it is.
He meets the businessman who wrote to him via the column.
They’ve spoken on the phone several times, and they get on well. Face-to-face is even better. The man is self-deprecating, droll. Diplomatically, he quizzes the unemployed man about his desires (“to feed my kids, pay off debts, take the strain out of my marriage”). They talk about possible ways the businessman can help – there is a modicum of PR work to be done. But there is also something more long-term. It requires a bit of graft, a bit of door-stopping, it’s not exactly glamorous.
“In short, you need to be humble to do it.”
***
Humble? The unemployed man couldn’t give a toss what others think. In fact he has always felt sorry for those who judge an individual by the fact they perform a job “society” (i.e unthinking elitists) deem menial, or lacking in real value. We can’t all be surgeons (or journalists/copywriters/lecturers/PR consultants). He feels sorry for people who ask “and what do you do?” at social gatherings without even being properly introduced. People who need, for some bizarre reason, to put you in a box. (Marked “not as important as me”)
***
Fifty-five (unimportant) people have had their dole payments cut – in some cases by as much as €44 per week – because of a “failure” to take up work.
Various newspapers carry the story without any investigation of what the work was, where it was, whether or not travel allowances were offered, whether public transport was available.
It is possible that an unemployed, car-less man in Monaghan who has a sick or depressed wife as well as a house full of pre-schoolers was offered a Mickey Mouse job with no long-term prospects (the numbers game, remember?) in a neighbouring county. He may have calculated his petrol and other expenses at €60, then taken the €44 hit. In order to keep his family intact.
Time for national newspapers to cop on. To interrogate Ruairi’s and Joan’s pronouncements. To insert in their contact lists the name and number of an articulate intelligent unemployed person who can give them the low-down. The other side. There are nearly half a million of us now. A direct quote from one of us from time to time would be appreciated.
The writer of this column wishes to remain anonymous. His identity is known to the editor