Only Fools And Horses

I had a very enlightening chat yesterday with an ex-pat Irish businessman who has been running a multi-million pound business in London for the last 20 years. He was over in Dublin to oversee a contract his company has on a major piece of public infrastructure which is currently under construction. (For his sake, it shall remain nameless).

He was telling me that he has a major headache at the moment finding casual labour in Dublin. I kid you not! This at a time when 440,000 people are signing-on and the construction sector is on its knees. According to him, the rate of unemployment assistance is too high for unemployed workers to risk losing by taking work that he is offering. This is a problem for him, as the number of workers he needs varies day-by-day (admittedly, not too attractive in terms of job security). Nevertheless, a job on such a high-profile site would surely enhance your chances of getting more regular work and you would think the Social Welfare authorities would be insisting these claimants took any work that was offered.

My friend contrasts the €204 rate here with the £70 + being offered in the UK, and says his company's contract is being put in serious jeopardy by something as ridiculous as not being able to get workers in Dublin during the greatest depression this country has suffered since 1929!

I accept that some of his complaints may have been self-serving, but surely something is terribly wrong with our benefits system when it is actively discouraging people from working for a living? Not to mention the damage it is doing to firms who are coming from abroad to invest and do business in this country.

Mary Hanafin, the talkative career politician offspring of a career politician and sister of a career politician, needs to stop concentrating on the family business of career politics and more on reforming the benefits system her department is running, to start getting people off the dole queues and back to work. We are already hopelessly uncompetitive in the costs the public sector impose on business. Lets not kill the work ethic as well.