"I'd work for £200 a week, no problem," said Derek Whelan (20), from Townsend Street. But in his experience such jobs are simply not available. "I've done loads of interviews in the past three months. There are jobs for £90 a week, but why work for an extra £20 or £30 if you can get £70 for staying at home and doing nothing?"

Others calling to the Tara Street, Dublin, employment office on Thursday afternoon were less frank, refusing even to divulge their names, but still offered a variety of reasons why jobs in Bewley's restaurants hold no attractions for them.

"I couldn't take a job for that money [£200]," said a man in his early 40s. "I'm married with five children and my wife gets a disability allowance. We get about £200, but if I took a job like that my tax-free allowance would be only £57. We'd definitely be worse off."

For most, however, the question was not "How can I afford to take a £200-a-week job?", but "Where can I find one?"

"Personally there's no problem working for that kind of money. I have two flatmates who do," said a former employee of Bewley's Grafton Street outlet, where he earned about £140 in take-home pay.

He left after seven months because he found the company "unpleasant" to work for, with managers, he claimed, continually making unreasonable demands of staff. "I don't blame the managers. It was nothing personal from them. It was the whole culture was wrong as far as I could see."

A 27-year-old electronics technician, recently returned from Madrid, said he would happily work for £200 if it was for a "normal working week", but not if it involved considerable overtime.

He would prefer to get a job to match his qualifications, but in the meantime would be quite prepared to work in Bewley's if it was really paying as much as its chairman, Mr Patrick Campbell, was suggesting. "Even if you were getting £150 it wouldn't be bad. Maybe I'll take a walk around to Bewley's now and see what it's like."

A 25-year-old anthropology graduate from south Dublin was also holding out for a position appropriate to his qualifications. But unlike the technician, a temporary job in Bewley's held no attractions.

"I wouldn't work in Bewley's. Look, you bust your ass to go to college and at the end of it all you don't want to go back to a job you could have got on leaving school. It's an 18-year-old's job," he declared unapologetically.

His housemates were in the same boat; all highly qualified and waiting for "the right job". Yet most people he knew would take a job "if it was really paying £200".

Ms Kate Ennals, press officer of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU), says that rather than focus on the apparent reluctance of workers to take jobs at certain rates, employers need to examine their recruitment techniques.

She said many employers simply stick a notice in their windows without a thought for how they can make themselves more attractive to job-seekers while delivering the jobs people need.

"The fact that there's work out there for people is one thing. But work that provides training and skills and the prospect of progression in life would be far more attractive than jobs which give people little prospect for the future," she said.

This issue is currently being jointly examined by the INOU, the Small Firms Association, FAS and the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs in an attempt to produce a model for employers to use to improve their recruitment abilities.

Ms Ennals referred to a survey carried out by an employers' body which showed there had been a poor level of response to job advertisements posted in the windows of outlets in Grafton Street. However, when the INOU, in a follow-up survey, sent a 40-year-old man to apply for the same jobs, "no one would take him".

Some employers brought people in for interviews without thinking of the kind of people they were seeking or asking the right questions, she added. There was also a prejudice against the long-term unemployed. "When it comes down to it people want to work, but not in low-paid jobs with no training and little prospect for the future."