Madam, – According to the recent OECD report on employment, Ireland’s economy is stabilising. It says the recession left “significant scars” on the labour market, but that the Irish recovery is unlikely to be vigorous enough to re-employ the 174,000 who have lost their jobs. But as wages fall, there is praise for the reduction in social welfare payments that the OECD says will make it more attractive to work.
As someone who had a period of six months’ unemployment – my first in over 40 years – I can assure the sages of the OECD that my return to employment would not have been “more attractive” nor would it have been accelerated, even by one nanosecond (1/1,000,000,000 second), by a reduction in social welfare benefit. The determinant was availability of employment of any kind for which I was qualified, even at the very significantly reduced rates which I was able to secure.
I’m not sure whether the OECD’s statements could be deemed a non sequitur or an oxymoron, but the combination of the views that the “recovery will not be vigorous enough to re-employ the 174,000 people who have lost their jobs” with “the reduction in social welfare payments . . . will make it more attractive to work” is, quite simply, asinine. – Yours, etc,