Parties fail to get worked up over jobless

THE jobs issue has dominated many recent elections - but not this one. Perhaps the recent falls in the unemployment register and the flood of new investment projects have taken the sting out of the debate. Yet the electorate constantly puts the issue of jobs and unemployment at or near the top of its agenda when questioned in opinion polls. So why has there been so little noise about it this time around?

The main reason is probably that employment creation under the Government has been running at record levels. The Taoiseach and his Ministers regularly boast about the increase of 1,000 a week in the number of people at work.

And the unemployment live register has also started to fall, with the latest total around 256,000, a drop of 25,800 on a year earlier. So the Opposition may believe there is not much mileage in attacking the Government in this area.

But huge issues remain to be tackled. Each year, up to 2000, some 20,000 young people will come into the jobs market and only a continued high rate of job creation can provide them with opportunities. And with some 150,000 people classified as long term unemployed - out of work for at least a year - and some 60,000 out of work for three years or more, long term unemployment remains a major problem.

This presents huge challenges for policy makers. Even in recent years, the numbers of long term unemployed have not fallen consistently as the economy boomed. The long term unemployed now account for 58 per cent of the unemployed, well above the EU average of 48 per cent.

Most of the parties move in the same direction when tackling long term unemployment.

The three Government parties recently published a White Paper on Human Resources Development. Among its central recommendations were the establishment of a national employment service, as a new subsidiary of FAS.

This would take a more active approach to training people and placing them in employment. It would also build on local employment services which already operate in many disadvantaged communities, offering intensive guidance, training and education. Partnership 2000 promises to extend this scheme and the Government parties see it as central to tackling long term unemployment.

This thinking is reflected in the manifestos of the Government parties, which also promise to tackle the key areas where the interaction of the tax and welfare systems provide a disincentive for people to return in work. Fine Gael lays heavy emphasis on reforming the Family Income Supplement, as does Fianna Fail.

Democratic Left believes all young people should be given training, work or further education when leaving school, while Labour proposes a "social guarantee" with similar objectives. DL, in a recent jobs document, also recommends measures aimed at areas of particular disadvantage, including special tax and other incentives to attract investment.

Fianna Fail's recommendations differ in detail, if not in direction. It favours an expansion of an existing programme operated by the Conference of Religious of Ireland, to offer work to 25,000 long term unemployed. It also proposes expanding the local employment services and allowing them to operate one integrated employment scheme to replace the range of schemes already on offer, of which the biggest is the Community Employment Scheme.

Fianna Fail is also calling for a special tax allowance for long term unemployed people returning to work, as well as special tax breaks for their employers.

The Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, are also calling for a much more active approach to placing people in jobs. All school leavers not going into further education or work would be assessed, the party proposes, and offered appropriate training or work experience. "Any person refusing to accept a reasonable offer of training or work experience would lose their entitlement to benefit payments," say the PDs.

Presumably, some element of compulsion would also apply in the case of proposals put forward by other parties.

All the parties are also offering a range of proposals to boost growth and job creation, much of it around their tax plans. However few parties are committed to giving a specific amount of resources by way of transfers to the unemployed or to new measures to tackle their plight. Only the Green Party is in favour of a full basic income, although the work of the Conference of Religious of Ireland has put this issue on the agenda.

A number of other parties have promised to study the issue, with Labour favouring a Green Paper. Elsewhere, most of the parties give the ritual nods to the minimum payment rates set out by the Commission on Social Welfare. The PDs, meanwhile, favour freezing benefit levels in real terms.

While those in work are offered £1.5 billion in tax reductions, the parties have been far less generous and considerably less specific in their promises to the jobless.