Officially there are 8,500 long-term unemployed people in Dublin, but a study by the Dublin Employment Pact (DEP) suggests that up to 37,000 people are either long-term unemployed or in danger of becoming so.
The figures were released at the signing of an employment charter for Dublin, at which trade unionists, business and community leaders promised to work "individually and jointly to promote quality initiatives to tackle unemployment" and "promote sustainable employment with equality of access" to all citizens.
The first signatory was the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ms Mary Freehill, who welcomed the contributions of more than 100 affiliated bodies to the work of the DEP. However, she criticised the Department of Education for refusing to provide adequate support for schools in the city's most deprived areas.
Other Government departments, local authorities and the Garda had worked to combat social exclusion "but there was no player there from education", she said, even though it was teachers in primary schools who saw the first signs of "stress, addiction and mental illness'.
The report, Solving Long Term Unemployment in Dublin, was prepared by a team from University College Dublin headed by Ms Eithne Fitzgerald. It compares figures from the Central Statistics Office, on which long-term unemployment is based, with its own findings. AS, the Local Employment Service, Dublin Chamber of Commerce, and the Dublin Docklands Development Authority.
As well as the 8,500 long-term unemployed people listed as actively seeking work, the study has identified a further 14,000 unemployed people not active in the jobs market and 5,000 lone parents who face serious barriers to work.
It states that there are 4,000 early school-leavers, 4,000 people on job schemes and 1,500 people in insecure, low-paid jobs, all of whom have poor prospects of regular employment.
The report finds that 60 per cent of the overall group studied are male and a third of them are over 45 years old. Only 14 per cent of the target group are under 25. In contrast, half of short-term unemployed people are under 25.
While many of the obstacles to the long-term unemployed finding work in a buoyant economy are well known - poor education, low self-esteem, criminal records, substance abuse - this is the first study to identify the full scale of the problem.
It also says that some consequences of the boom are aggravating long-term unemployment.
"Young early school-leavers can get short-term work now, for example, pushing shopping trolleys, but are at high risk of dropping out and are rarely on any career path," the report states.
At the same time many employers seeking permanent staff have "inflexible requirements" in terms of qualifications and previous experience.
Some local employment schemes (LES) which target the long-term unemployed are criticised for having weak links with the business community, and State agencies such as FAS.
"Access by the LES to resources of other public agencies tends to be critically dependent on personal relationships between individuals, and special favour deals, rather than long-term policy arrangement between organisations that can survive a change in personnel."
It criticises the outreach strategies operated by LES schemes. Of the 4,400 LES clients in 1999, the report states that only 2,200 are long-term unemployed. "This represents a fraction of the potential target population - at best a quarter, more realistically between 10 and 20 per cent".
Despite these criticisms, it recommends the expansion of LES schemes so they can "reach everyone who is long-term unemployed or at high risk of unemployment. The Local Employment Service should be the main bridge between the world of unemployment and the world of work."
The new database should be used to contact potential clients with a "positive message" of what the LES can offer. This could be done by door-to-door contact, targeting known local unemployment blackspots and accepting referrals from relevant community groups.
When people are contacted, the full range of an individual's needs should be targeted with an integrated service.