"Young Persons Work" Guarantee

Last weekend, the Labour Party had its annual conference in Galway. At the conference, I highlighted my growing concerns for the increasing amount of young people who are now unemployed and some proposals that could be initiated to tackle this. Below is a brief summary of the main points I made::

FACTS:

Unemployment leaves people stressful and unhappy.
The psychological imprint of joblessness leads to a loss of self esteem, fatalism and a loss of control over daily life.
The longer the period of unemployment, the harder the re-entry into the workforce.
Young unemployed people carry forward a "20% wage scar" all their working life.

The under 25's represent 26.6% of total unemployment, even though this age cohort only make up 13 % of the total labour force.

Labour Party Proposal on Youth Unemployment:

There needs to be a range of training, education and employment service opportunities available for unemployed people, to improve their employability.
A key priority should be on interventions aimed at preventing the drift of unemployed people into long term unemployment as well as the prevention of early school leaving.
There is a growing problem of youth unemployment, particularly affecting those who have recently or will soon leave second and third level education. It is important for them to maintain contact with the labour market. In this regard, an expanded range of training education and work experience opportunities should be provided and guaranteed.
The setting up of a Young Persons Guarantee would assure any person between 18-24 who has been out of work for 12 months has a number of progressive options, other than the dole queue.

New Lift Contractor for Ballymun Flats

After eleven weeks of no lift service, an injunction was granted to Dublin City Council to prevent any pickets from the previous contractors outside the blocks of flats. Since then, a new contractor has been hired to fix the lifts, and work started yesterday on reinstating the lift serivce. Joseph Plunkett Tower, the only 14 storey block remaining was the first to get its lifts back in service. The Area Manager has informed me that work will start Monday on the remaining blocks without a lift service.

Army Expected to Fix Lifts Tomorrow

Members of the Irish Army are due to attempt to fix the lifts in Ballymun from tomorrow (Friday 15th April). Two weeks ago I called on the City Manager to request the army to offer assistance to the residents that have been affected by this dispute. Since then, the Manager has informed me that he has written to the Minister of Defence requesting a Ministerial Order requesting the Army's assistance with the lift situation in Ballymun. The order has been granted and it is expected that they will begin to fix the lifts from tomorrow onwards.

Letter to City Manager Re Ballymun Lifts

Dear Manager,

As of tomorrow, some residents in the Ballymun area will have been without a lift service for nine weeks. The mood among residents is quite low and there is huge dissatisfaction with DCC over its attempts to resolve this issue. Furthermore, from what I am aware, there has been no information given to tenants stating the facts of the current situation. With that in mind, residents have been left in the dark and have had to rely on the papers, which in one case had inaccurate information. At the least, I think all tenants affected by the situation could have been notified via a letter of somewhat stating the facts and the possible solutions that were been investigated.

More importantly at this stage is the need to resolve the issue of the broken lifts. I am aware that DCC engineers have been in talks with the Dept. Of Defence, and hopefully this may bring an interim solution to this issue which effectively could go on until Pickerings contract is up for renewal in June.

Finally Manager, after nine weeks of no lift service, something needs to be done to address the unacceptable conditions that residents have been left in. I urge you to do whatever is possible to alleviate the suffering that none of us could understand as we are not directly affected by the situation.

Regards,

Cllr. John Lyons