Irelan's Young : The Forgotten Victims Of The Recession
Nearly a quarter of young people are out of work and unless this problem is confronted an entire generation may be lost. So why isn’t the government doing more to tackle youth unemployment?
Valerie Flynn, 12 Apr 2011
In the early days of recession, there was always a faint whiff of Schadenfreude when the media singled out youth unemployment from among the host of symptoms of Ireland’s faltering economy. The cosseted Celtic Tiger cubs had, according to the usual media depiction, grown up with an overblown sense of entitlement to the comfortable, affluent lifestyle afforded them by their nouveau riche parents.
Then the bubble burst and Ireland went back to being an economic cesspit of high unemployment and low opportunity. And the Tiger cubs, it is insinuated (few media commentators have the balls to say it outright), in some way got what they deserved for being so bloody privileged.
But as the months of recession have turned into years, trite media vignettes of the unfortunate ‘cubs’, so neatly illustrating how Ireland’s economy has returned full-circle to the 1980s, just don’t cut the mustard anymore. The young people signing on each month, or booking one-way tickets to London or Sydney, bear no relation to the Celtic cub cliché. They are friends, siblings, former classmates, former colleagues. They want to work, use their time productively and apply their education and skills. Against the odds, they want to contribute in some way to a society and economy that has shut the door on them.
This is the picture that emerges in a damning new study by the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI). The researchers criticise Ireland’s employment services as “substandard”, while recent cuts to supports for those on training courses “will only drive young people especially those on low incomes out of the education and training system and into either poverty or emigration.”
James Doorley, Assistant Director of NYCI and one of the authors of the report, points out that the full extent of the problem is partially masked by the high numbers returning to education and by the traditional, so-called ‘safety valve’ of emigration. But in spite of those factors, the numbers are still alarming. Unemployment among under-25s in Ireland has tripled since 2008 and now stands at 24.2%, the second highest rate in Europe. For young men under 25, the problem is even more acute: one in three is unemployed.
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