Politics

By Tom Boland. Protection’ can sometimes be a euphemism for threats. A classic mafia racket is to ask businesses for money in exchange for ‘protection’, which is actually a threat of violence for non-payment. However, the extortion is dressed up as a community service. Recently, social welfare in Ireland has turned into a ‘protection’ racket. While officially called the ‘Department of Social Protection’, its protection comes with threats attached. Unlike the mafia, these are not even thinly-veiled threats. Unemployed people with no other means are monitored, assessed and ordered around under the threat of having their welfare payments reduced by 1144 or suspended for up to nine weeks. Almost every single communication carries a threat, for instance: “If you fail to attend, your jobseeker’s payment may be reduced or stopped completely. Your payment may also be reduced or stopped completely if you refuse to co-operate with Employment Services in its efforts to arrange employment, training or education opportunities for you”. Like the mafia, this new ‘protection’ racket is in the business of making people offers they can’t refuse. Of course, those on social welfare receive money from the Department of Social Protection. If they didn’t, they would be completely destitute. Therefore, the threats to reduce or rescind welfare entitlement are threats to expose people to hunger, cold and homelessness. It is not a humane policy, even if it is dressed up as “helping people to return to work”. Jobseekers were always obliged to look for work, but since 2012 Pathways to Work has given power to social welfare offices to oblige clients to attend meetings, seek work, take internships, join schemes, acquire work experience and accept job offers, no matter how unsuitable. Of course, many officers apply the policies sensibly and humanely, but this October the Taoiseach and Tánaiste announced that the long-term unemployed would now be the target of intensified intervention. 100,000 people will be assessed by case-officers, directed to re-training and generally cajoled and coerced into taking whatever work is available. Furthermore, the business of ‘returning people to work’ will be out-sourced to private companies, which will be rewarded as people take up and retain posts. Does Pathways to Work really work? Even the government hedges its bets, by stating that positive trends in employment growth “…are arguably due, at least in part, to the programme of work mandated by Government under Pathways to Work and the Action Plan for Jobs”. To analyse ‘the precise impact’ a systematic study will be initiated. It is disappointing that no analysis of the impact of a pilot or trial run of these policies was made, as was done in the UK. Instead, these policies are nationwide and pervasive, for good or for ill. So, is an increase in employment due to Pathways? Here we must be wary of ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ arguments: that is, the presumption that something which precedes something causes it. According to the Quarterly National Household Survey, the most reliable figures on employment and unemployment, in 2012 employment grew by 20,000, and in 2013 by 35,000. In 2014, the figure will probably be between the two. This is not an accelerating growth in jobs; in fact, since the population is expanding and emigration decreasing, growth in employment is scarcely keeping pace with demography. However, the main point is that in 2012, jobs were created, despite the fact that there were only a handful of social welfare offices operating the Pathways programme of monitoring and sanctions. These Intreo offices in Sligo, Arklow, Tallaght, and Dublin’s King’s Inns Street were opened in October, and surely cannot be the cause of 20,000 new jobs. So, jobs in 2012 would have happened anyway. 2013 saw the ‘roll-out’ of dozens of Intreo offices across the state, and coincided with an increase in jobs growth. Yet, this jobs growth has flat-lined even though the ‘roll-out’ continued through 2014. So there is not even a clear correlation between the nationwide implementation of Pathways and growth in jobs, much less causality. Yet it is still quite possible that Pathways does make people work. It mightn’t actually create jobs, unless one counts shifting people onto CE and Tús schemes or JobBridge and Gateway internships; but this is more like free labour for employers or public bodies. However, what it may do is place such pressure on people that they are willing to travel abroad or to cities in order to find work. It could also ensure that people must either take a job or become destitute, so that night-work, poorly remunerated strenuous manual labour, unpredictable ‘zero-hour contracts’ or sales-on-commission jobs become compulsory. Simultaneously, Joan Burton has aspirations for the creation of a ‘living-wage’ sufficient for a decent standard of living in Ireland, yet the Pathways system in reality means that jobseekers must accept any job at the minimum wage, which is scarcely enough. Without having access to the case files of hundreds of thousands of job-seekers, we cannot be sure if Pathways has really made a difference for individuals actually securing a job, nor can we know how many people have accepted work – or internships – only because of the threat of sanction. But overall, it is clear that Pathways pressurises the unemployed and guarantees a steady stream of applicants to any job, no matter how difficult or unappealing. The overall effect may actually be the reduction of the Live Register by forcing thousands of people to take on and repeatedly quit dead-end jobs that are monotonous, unfulfilling and poorly remunerated. Research carried out recently at Waterford Institute of Technology with long-term unemployed people showed several problems with Pathways. Firstly, they are quite aware that they are being coerced to seek work, regardless of whether it is suitable in the long term; for instance, one man was told to attend an interview or lose his benefits, despite having no experience or interest in the job – and little to no chance of succeeding in the interview. Another described the panic and desperation of

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By Frank Connolly. Judging by the speakers at the massive rally in Dublin on 10th December against the Government’s water charge regime, the protest is far from over – and it is no longer just about water.  Despite media efforts, most notably in RTÉ, to downplay the scale of the mobilisation on a mid-week, mid-winter, working day, the turnout was impressive with up to 60,000, at its peak, gathering at Merrion Square for the speeches and entertainment. Although there were plenty of Right2Water, Sinn Féin, anti-austerity and People Before Profit banners the crowd largely comprised working people, young and old, from across the country who are clearly of the view that water is one charge too many. While there are differences of opinion on whether water charges, even as a conservation measure, are wrong in principle, or whether people should be encouraged to break the law and refuse to pay, those on the march appear to be of a mind that the issue has moved on: to the credibility of the Government itself. In their contributions from the platform, Gerry Adams, Richard Boyd Barrett and Clare Daly, among others, predictably made the government parties the target of attack, not only for their mishandling of the water debacle but for all the other austerity measures that have devastated the lives of so many, and forced the young away in droves, over the past six years. Trade-union speakers warned of the hidden agenda of privatisation that clearly influenced the architects of the new water regime, most notably the former environment minister and now EU Commissioner, Phil Hogan. The dramatic climbdown on charges and the decision not to deploy metering until well into the life of the next government may not be enough to persuade sufficient numbers of a deeply sceptical, and cynical, public to register with Irish Water by next April. Already the forces of the Right are railing against the prospect of Sinn Féin as the lead partners in a Left administration. Efforts to construct a new party from former Fine Gael and other right-wing independents around Lucinda Creighton or Shane Ross, or even Michael Fitzmaurice, reveal a level of disarray that is seriously frustrating for those most fearful of a Left alternative. Within the government parties there is an element of panic over opinion polls that suggest that many first-time TDs elected in the 2011 ‘democratic revolution’ will remain just that. The desperation is most acute for Labour given recent figures that suggest it will be lucky to retain 10 seats from the remarkable 37 they won last time. But Fine Gael too is in trouble as it drops below 20% from its election high of more than 36%. Although these trends can, and most likely will, be reversed as the election approaches and voters interrogate the actual detail of party policies, there is no question that a fundamental change can be expected in the historic year of 2016, if not before. Fine Gael may cobble together something with a bloc of like-minded independents, or if it comes to it and needs must, in a coalition with Fianna Fáil. The Left, on the other hand, can always snatch possible defeat from the jaws of victory by failing to take an opportunity to generate fundamental political and radical change. It can do its best to convince people that socialists and their progressive allies could never really run an economy (unlike those bright sparks in FF, the PDs and FG) or it can seek to provide solutions to the challenges that confront the Irish people over the coming decade. There is a potentially sizeable bloc of progressive parties, and of left-wing and independent TDs who could help propel a real alternative to the various formations on the right. This would require a dramatic initiative by trade unions, community organisations, progressive NGOs and think-tanks, Sinn Féin, Labour and other serious left-leaning politicians and parties, in the new year. It would be aimed at finding an agreed charter for government that can embrace the key concerns of an austerity-fatigued electorate and be focused on radical  political reform; the replacement of regressive charges, including the hated USC; on water and property taxes; and promote a progressive taxation system that targets corporate and other wealth. It could address fairness and equality, low pay, poverty, youth unemployment and emigration, and public and private debt. Given the approaching anniversary of the Rising, it could set out the strategy for an agreed, democratic and genuine Republic. To succeed it will require a degree of ambition and political courage that has been absent for too long in the culture of the Irish left. •