'I'm a positive person, so I'm going to get a job. I'm not qualified but I can work anywhere''

LAURA RYAN has a challenging job in a city that faces many challenges, chief among them unemployment. Ryan’s job as communications officer in the Limerick Communications Office is to “get Limerick in the headlines for all the right reasons”.

“Limerick has an important story to tell, a story that needs to shift dated perceptions and we need to continually talk up the positives,” she stresses.

The fact is, there are 456,256 people out of work in the State, and Limerick city has the grim distinction of having the highest percentage of unemployment, at 28.6 per cent.

Commenting on Limerick’s unemployment statistics, Limerick city mayor and Labour councillor Gerry O’Loughlin said: “Given Limerick’s location and beauty this is rather shocking.”

O’Loughlin sees part of the problem as being because “of the lack of positive branding” of the city.

However, Limerick is also a city in a process of change, progress and development, as Ryan points out. Regeneration Limerick, which was established five years ago to regenerate four specific areas of the city – Southill, Moyross, Ballinacurra Weston and St Mary’s Park – is entering a new phase.

“A lot of construction projects will be going to tender shortly,” Ryan says. There are currently 63 units under construction, with another 116 to be completed by the end of next year.

“They are social inclusion projects with job opportunities and, as far as possible, people from those local regions will be employed in those projects. Regeneration is more than knocking houses and building new ones.”

There will also be 74 new jobs coming up as part of the redevelopment of King John’s Castle, which is due to start next month. And Limerick Institute of Technology is developing a much-anticipated fashion incubator.

Limerick City Council and Limerick County Council are due to merge in 2014. “Up to now, Limerick has lacked a single voice,” Ryan says. “This is a critical time, Limerick holds key ministerial portfolios and there’s a huge opportunity to move forward with a single purpose to overcome present challenges. If Limerick is to perform as a strong centre, local government unity will eliminate duplication and help the major regeneration efforts which are currently underway.”

To prepare for the merger of the city and county councils, a new “super manager”, Conn Murray, has been appointed. The roles of city and county managers have been merged, and Murray took up his new role in the last couple of weeks.

Ryan points out that the unemployment statistics only reflect Limerick city centre, and not the wider city. “Up to now the exclusion of many of Limerick’s suburbs have distorted the city’s statistical profile which has had a damaging effect attracting foreign direct investment as Limerick’s population, workforce and graduate numbers have not been accurately reflected. A larger city area will redress this unfavourable statistical profile which conveys a misleading impression.”

Meanwhile, 15,194 people remain on the live register at Limerick city’s Dominic Street social welfare office. These are some of their stories, and also of those who have returned to employment.

Owen O’Halloran (36) Unemployed six weeks

I’ve been unemployed six weeks. I was working in Irish Cement, in production and sales, for 17 years. I need to get out there and start earning again as fast as I can. There’s a financial crash at home now. I have a mortgage for a house, two kids and a partner. I’ve been to the bank already about the mortgage.

The house is gone. We’ve accepted we’ll lose it, but we’ll stay in it as long as we can. We built the house in 2005. The mortgage is €1,620 a month, including the life policy you have to have. There’s 25 years left on it. It’s been on the market for the last three years and I still can’t sell it. The price has been reduced three times. It’s in negative equity.

Losing a job affects everyone in a family. Long-term unemployment is a big fear. I don’t want to be a statistic. The more knockbacks you get, the more down you get. I’ve got a

few already. I’m dealing with it by doing a lot of running on the road. That kind of helps to clear the head; you run and think and work things out. And it’s free.

It’s not an option for me to stay out of work. I just want to get out there and work, but it seems you have to have a course to do the simplest jobs that are there, even being a security guard.

I want to do a barbers course. Looking into the future, everyone is still going to need a haircut,

and there’s definitely work there. My testosterone levels are a small bit high for women’s hairdressing!

I can’t find a training course that’s only for barbers in Limerick. I’ve sent a few emails to barbers, offering my services for free to gain a bit of experience. Maybe I can get an internship. I’m looking at JobBridge. But I can’t spend four years in training. I have to do it in two. I can’t afford to wait four years before I start earning again.

Mark Geoghegan (32) Unemployed 10 months

I was working in a pet shop in sales for three years. I left school after my Junior Certificate. I’ve been unemployed before, but the longest I had ever been out of work before was six months and it was much easier to get a job them.

It’s pretty tough. I’ve sent off at least 100 CVs and I’ve gone cold-calling to jobs. I’ve often gone into shops where they haven’t been looking for people, just to leave in my CV.

Up until this year any interview I’ve ever gone for, I’ve always got the job. This year, I’ve easily had 15 interviews and I’ve been refused 15 jobs.

It takes a lot of confidence out of you when you are getting interviews but the phone never rings afterwards. I find that pretty bad. It batters you alright.

I’m a positive person, so I’m going to get a job. I’m not qualified but I can work anywhere. There is no job I wouldn’t apply for. I’d sell anything: if you walked into a shop in the morning and even if you didn’t want something, I’d sell it to you.

I know myself I’m trying to get a job. I couldn’t be bothered with an internship, though. It’s too risky. It’s a job I want and a job I need.

Michael Doyle (56) Unemployed three years

I worked for 20 years in car rental at Shannon, and then five years in the service department of a garage. We were all brought up to the office one day to see the branch manager and I was one of the people they had picked to let go.

I’ve been to so many different garages, throwing in CVs, keeping my ears open, asking everyone. Nothing. I’d do anything – painting, decorating. I’d even sweep the roadside.

It’s very monotonous, waking up in the morning and having nothing to do. I do the garden and the housework, because I’m house-proud. I live alone. I go out for a coffee every morning, and hang round the shopping centre, always asking about work.

If a job came up in the morning, I’d be gone in two minutes. But the cost of petrol and diesel means it’s harder to go out and look for a job on spec, because you’re watching everything you spend.

I think unemployed people should be given free travel for one or two days a week, so they can go out and try to find work somewhere else. I don’t know what I would do if I had to pay a mortgage. It would be a disaster.

I get €188 a week, and put away €60-€70 for bills. I find going down for a takeaway is much cheaper than cooking at home.

My favourite is chips, boiled rice and curry sauce. You can get a cheap lunch in the middle of the day. I don’t ever do a grocery shop, unless I’m buying cleaning products, but I look for meal deals in Tesco that I can cook at home.

I paid the household charge and now I’m sorry I paid it, because we don’t know what way they’ll value our houses. I would hope to get a job that would keep me going until 66 or 67, a watchman or something. I’m fairly positive. Something has to happen.

Damien Masterson (51) Unemployed one year. Set up own business in May

I had been working 30 years in the construction industry. I was a civil engineer and a technician. For 25 years, I worked for the same company. We had big contracts – golf courses, roads, bridges, bypasses. Then people started to be laid off. After the Limerick tunnel project finished, the last cohort of us still left were made redundant.

When I knew I was going to be let go, in those last months before leaving, I couldn’t be approached because I was boiling with anger.

I had huge anger. It took a year for that to pass. When you’re with the same firm that long, as long as I was, it was like your family. I felt I belonged, and I knew I belonged; I was one of a core group of maybe 10 there from the start.

My son even followed me into civil engineering. When you think you’re part of a family and a core group and that’s taken away, it’s very difficult. You become just a number. I found it very, very hard.

Apart from anger, there was panic. I had my mortgage paid, but it’s not easy not having a weekly salary any more.

I decided I wanted to try and set up my own business. I was tired of travelling up and down the country in my old job.

I wouldn’t have said hello to my neighbours more than twice a year. I wanted to stay local and be involved in my own community.

I took a start-your-own- business course at the National Franchise Centre here in Limerick. I bought the franchise to System 10 Weight Loss. I think weight loss is the future.

I won’t know for at least a year if it’s working for me. I need four clients a week to make it work. I’m not there yet. I’m still learning about the business.

But now I’m not on the road any more, I’m in my own bed every night, I know my neighbours and I’m making a modest income.

Signing off: back in business

Leona O’Callaghan (31) Unemployed one year. Set up a business in June

I was working for six years in an accounts department. My job went. Everything changes when you’re suddenly not working; it’s like losing how you value yourself. I had probably over-valued myself as to how good I was in my job, and not having my job any more was losing who I felt I was.

I’d never not worked and had always been really busy and suddenly I had loads of time on my hands. In the beginning, I found it very hard. I was too embarrassed to tell people. I just said I was concentrating on the kids for a while. Not working put a lot of pressure on my marriage and it changed the kind of lifestyle we had; cutting back on everything.

I had to either change, or stay on the dole queue, because there weren’t any jobs. If I had had a choice of being out on my own or working for an employer, I would never have gone out on my own.

I saw a gap in the market for kids entertainment. I sat my husband down for a strong cup of coffee and said I wanted to buy a double-decker bus. The accountancy background stood to me when I was doing the figures: you have to use what skills you’ve used all your life.

The play bus is a double-decker converted bus. I put savings, redundancy payment and a bank loan into it. There’s a disco and karaoke, and a slide and an obstacle course and we do face painting. We drive it to your house. It’s €200 Monday to Thursday and €230 at weekends. I set up in business in June, and have had about 60 bookings since.

Money is short, but it seems the last thing people cut back on is their kids’ birthday parties. I do as many housing estates as big houses in the country.