IT WAS perhaps inevitable that there would be disappointment over the modest scale of the Government's proposals to combat unemployment.
The Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, says employment will increase by 31,000 and the number of unemployed will drop by 9,000, using Labour Force Survey criteria. The Budget proposals themselves will take a further 17,000 long term unemployed off the Live Register.
The cost to the Exchequer of the 17,000 jobs will be £10 million, with the cost divided equally between the Department of Social Welfare and the Department of Enterprise and Employment.
This may represent good value for money, but it will not make a serious dent in the numbers of long term unemployed on the Live Register, nearly 140,000. And few of the 17,000 long term unemployed targeted in the Budget are still likely to be in a job at the end of 1997.
About 5,000 of them will be taken on by employers willing to avail of the £80 a week subsidy for recruiting people who have been on the dole for over three years. Such subsidies have had a poor record in the past for creating real jobs.
A further 1,000 people will be recruited to the new pilot Community Employment (CE) scheme proposed by the Task Force on Long Term Unemployment in its recent report.
This pilot scheme will last three years and be evaluated to see if the 1,000 jobs are sustainable and the scheme can be extended. By definition it will not be possible to establish the viability of these jobs in the short term.
Another 1,000 will go to people entering the Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme run by the Department of Education. These provide second chance education not jobs. As they simply replace 1,000 places cut from the VTOS by the Department of Education last year, it could be argued that they constitute no increase at all.
A further 5,000 long term unemployed will be able to avail of `work trials' with employers who have prospective vacancy or can offer worthwhile experience. In other words these are short term placements with firms that may result in jobs, and may not.
The most viable jobs are likely to emerge from the 5,000 extra places to be given to unemployed people under the `Back to Work' scheme run by the Department of Social Welfare. This allows people to hang onto elements of their social welfare benefits for up to three years after finding a job, or becoming self employed.
In this context it is hardly surprising that the general secretary of the National Organisation for the Unemployed, Mr Mike Allen, said that, "with economic growth surpassing all our EU counterparts it is an utter shame that the Government did not make a genuine effort to tackle the problem of long term unemployment
But was more possible? A recent costing of CE schemes suggested it would cost the Exchequer £770 million a year to halve long term unemployment through the mechanism of employment schemes.
The Government remains committed to maintaining the present numbers on schemes at 40,000 a year. That will cost the Exchequer £262 million this year.
The most controversial measure is that aimed at the younger age group. In future 18 and 19 year olds will have to participate in a "work progression programme".
Under this, if they are signing on the Live Register for more than six months, they must register with FAS or the Local Employment Service. They will receive intensive counselling and various employment options.
Originally the Department of Enterprise and Employment was pushing for harsher measures, such as a lower rate of unemployment benefit for young people, similar to the British scheme. The Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, signalled that this was not on and he appears to have won this round. How effective the new approach to youth unemployment is, remains to be seen.
However, Mr Dr Rossa had to bow to pressure from Fine Gael over subsidies for employers. His fear that these could be used to provide cheap labour was echoed yesterday by the National Youth Council. Its director, Mr Peter Byrne, said yesterday that "extra tax breaks to the low paid should not be seen as a licence for employers to print their own wage bills".
On a wider front, the Government has tried to make the social welfare and tax system "employment friendly", particularly at the lower end of the jobs market. Significantly the Small Firms Association, which represents many employers in this sector, has welcomed the Budget.
It has welcomed the reduced levels of employer and employee PRSI, along with lower rates of Corporation Tax. Its chairwoman, Ms Lorraine Sweeney, says that the job creation subsidy, which is worth £80 a week to employers, is also very welcome.
However the Federation of Food, Drink and Tobacco's director, Mr Ciaran Fitzgerald, said the Government was "putting a major question mark against future investment in the food sector in Ireland".
The problem is that this sector pays rates much nearer to the average industrial wage than many of the smaller, indigenous labour intensive industries in the SFA. There is nothing in this Budget to make it cheaper for employers to recruit workers at the higher end of the wage scale, and comparatively little in it for those workers either.
At the end of the day the Minister for Finance will be depending on continued growth in the economy to create 31,000 jobs in the mainstream labour market. As he only expects unemployment to fall by 9,000, based on Labour Force Survey criteria, it is clear that the vast majority of long term unemployed will still be unemployed when next year's Budget comes around.