Giving People Dignity By Getting Them Off The Dole
I grew up in the United States as the son of a deadbeat dad (a father who didn’t pay his child support). For six years, my mother and our family of nine kids under the age of 15 were on public benefits.
It was hardscrabble times. You can be poorer in the United States than it is possible to be in Ireland. For example, the same social benefits payments as that extended to a single Joe Public in Ireland would push a family of three above the poverty line (Joe, Patty and baby Jane) in the United States. A single person on a minimum wage job in Ireland earns more than what would qualify for the ‘‘poverty line’’ for a family of four in the United States. We have a much broader, and safer, safety net here. On balance, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it’s a question worth asking.
At my first opportunity, and before I could afford it (I was about 27 years old), I went back to the social benefits office and repaid the $63,000 in benefits we as a family had received during the six- year period two decades prior. It’s not a thing people are forced to do, and it’s not something people do often. But I share this story because I know what it feels like to be on the public benefit, and the sense of dignity and self-worth that is restored when you get off of it.
People in Ireland who are on the live register would love to become taxpayers again. People on the live register want to contribute and want to work for the public benefit rather than simply be on the public benefit.
Can we give people who are on the live register their dignity back by welcoming them into our workforce? There already is such a programme: it’s called JobBridge, and I can tell you, there are good people on it. We employ two people in one of my companies in Cork, and they are doing good work and earning their way into new careers. It costs very little to the company, as the workers are paid via their social benefit plus a small stipend. It’s an internship opportunity.
Can more of our companies and institutions help more of our citizens provide public benefit even while they are on public benefit? Absolutely. No doubt, hundreds of thousands of people who could work at least a few days a week in exchange for their public benefit, and that’s an opportunity for Ireland to get more competitive while taking advantage of an apparent weakness. JobBridge has over 5,000 people on it already.
Similarly, another new programme, called JobsPlus, has embraced a similar goal of providing employers with incentive to consider the non-working worker. That said, we’re still not thinking broadly enough. Entrepreneurship is the main generator of jobs in any economy. Small indigenous businesses create virtually all new jobs in the country.
Could there be a programme to enable people who are on the public benefit to either start their own businesses or join up and contribute to other start-ups? I intend to answer that question in my role as chairman of the Entrepreneurship Forum.
Right now 400,000 people are on the live register. If Ireland is going to boom again, 75 per cent of them need to get off it.
The safety net has become a safety trap. It’s what Americans call an ‘‘attractive nuisance’’. This is something which, like a shiny object, draws people to it, even though it’s at their own peril. Like a river embankment that draws children to it to play, only to slide dangerously downward.
Just so, with all the best of intentions, Ireland has designed social supports and labour policies into a social-engineering version of the Eagles’ Hotel California: people may want to check out, but considering the surefire benefits of the live register against the risks of available employment, it makes little sense to leave.
Nobody — well, almost nobody — goes onto the live register with the intention of staying there. Nearly everybody wants to work a meaningful job. It’s not as if people want to be in the unfortunate and soul-destroying place of receiving public benefit without producing work that benefits others. And, benefits- bashing myths aside, it’s not as if social benefits allow people to live large. They don’t.
We must enact meaningful reforms to the social benefits schemes to require — or at least incentivise — those on jobseeker’s benefits and jobseeker’s allowances to work for the good of the country. If we were to model the US, we could simply cut the benefits of the unemployed by over 50 per cent, and see whether that would cause a scramble for employment that would instantly propel the country to a much higher level of productivity and efficiency.
If that’s too draconian, we might continue to pay people the benefits they are receiving, but encourage them to work 50 per cent of a full-time job in return for these relatively generous benefits. Then the challenge would be to allocate meaningful work to people. This sounds like an impossible, insoluble problem — just the kind of problem that we must in fact confront.
Some people say the jobs just aren’t there. And that’s true for specific industries.Then again, consider a friend of mine from Spain who recently found three jobs in the course of a few days in Ireland.Yes,the jobs were‘‘beneath’’ her, working in retail and in childcare and as a waitress, and her professional qualifications and college education made her disappointed to take them. But she took two of the jobs. And now she is on the career ladder, out in the work- force and making contacts that will likely lead to further opportunities.
For our economy to move forward, 300,000 of the 400,000 people getting public benefit need to start benefiting the public instead. Only then can they — and we — all thrive.
Sean O’Sullivan, Sunday Business Post 11 August 2013
Originally published at sosv.com on January 29, 2014.
