THERE MAY be no net increase in the level of employment in the economy until 2013, a new report drawn up by the National Economic and Social Council has forecast.
The economic and social council report says that high unemployment and the growing level of long-term unemployment make it urgent to review the supports and services in place for jobseekers. It maintains that error rather than fraud accounts for the greater part of social welfare overpayments.
It also urges an improvement in welfare-to-work (or activation) strategies. However, it says sanctions imposed on those who refuse to take part, such as lowering or suspending payments, should be carried out in a fair and transparent manner.
The council also says that while the level of income support for people who are jobless for a long time are high in Ireland by international standards, this is not the case when people first become unemployed.
“A detailed analysis of replacement rates shows that the large majority of claimants on the Live Register face replacement rates that are low.
“This is because the large majority of claimants are either single people or have spouses/ partners still in employment, whose earnings are taken into account in the household means test, which reduce the amounts of social welfare paid.”
The report says significant groups do not appear on the Live Register, notably the “unemployed self-employed” and people who have exhausted their entitlement to jobseeker’s benefit and whose spouses/partners continue to earn. These aspects require changes “if supports and services are to reach unemployed people and prevent them being scarred for the rest of their lives by their current unemployment”.
The report points out that changes are already under way; that a major reconfiguration for delivering employment services is taking place, access to further education and training for the unemployed is being facilitated in new ways, the capacity for effective activation is being developed while social welfare has been cut in some areas. However it says further reforms should be guided by a long-term vision of what constitutes an effective unemployment regime in a knowledge-based economy, and be imbued “with greater empathy and less suspicion towards those who have lost their jobs or the misfortune to be seeking a first one” at this time.
The economic and social council calls for the Government’s new national internship programme “to be more boldly developed”. It says it should aim to raise “the extremely poor language skills of Irish graduates” and be extended beyond the 5,000 places planned. The report says the response of the labour market to the economic crisis to date can be fairly described as “Government-led and department-driven”.
It says that in the three years to mid-2011, six waves of significant adjustments affecting employment and unemployment policies have taken place.
“A coherent long-term strategy ensuring their consistency has been lacking; at the two extremes, some adjustments have been ad hoc and have already ended, and some have begun doing what was necessary for some time but what was lost sight of during the boom years.”
The report says that in reflecting on the aggregate of responses to the unemployment crisis taken to date, it is clear that the State and its agencies cannot make the required impact on their own.
The National Economic and Social Council, which includes representatives of business, trade unions farming and other groups, advises the Taoiseach on strategic issues for Ireland’s economic and social development.
NESC REPORT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:
- Labour market will take years to recover.
- A significant number of the unemployed are not entitled to jobseeker’s benefit or jobseeker’s allowance and do not appear on the Live Register.
- The new National Employment and Entitlement Service must adopt strong customer focus, train frontline staff to high levels and ensure health, housing and other services are “employment friendly”.
- Error rather than fraud accounts for the greater part of social welfare overpayments.
- Tightening controls on fraud should not involve treating everyone on the Live Register with greater suspicion.
- Any sanctions imposed on those refusing to take part in welfare-to- work strategies should involve surgical reductions in welfare payments, not generalised cuts.
- The new national internship programme should be extended beyond the current 5,000 places.
- The opportunity to pay jobseeker’s benefit at a higher rate for a limited period should be considered when the economy improves.
