theLibertyinterview

 by Maolseachlainn O Ceallaigh

Amid the clutter of paper and files, there is a definite sense of camaraderie and even high spirits in the poky offices. Not that the workers there don’t take unemployment seriously; hardly that, since most of them were unemployed before starting on Community Employment Schemes here.

Elaine Mulvaney has tasted unemployment too. "I was unemployed for two and a half years myself before I became a project manager in the Tallaght Information Centre for the Unemployed."

She worked on developing training courses for six years before becoming managing director of the Tallaght Centre. Before working in the Coombe’s Centre this year she was, perhaps ironically, out of a job again for some months.

"You forget what it’s like being unemployed", she muses. Then she hastens to correct herself; "No, you don’t forget, it’s just that...the memory becomes distant. You have to constantly work with people who are out of work to keep the memory of what unemployment is about refreshed."

They certainly get the opportunity. The Information Centre attracts about 30 people a day. Some want to be talked through the intricacies of the social welfare system; others just want to have access to a phone or photocopier. "The fact that our staff are so transitory has implications for the service", says Elaine. "I’d like to have more full-time staff," she says. The current workers in the Centre have a tenure of up to two and a half years.

"The Centre needs proper funding and proper resources. As well as staff that give advice, we need staff that can train people," Elaine continues. The Centre has two offices in the Coombe, and also operates a low-charge crèche in the nearby Ashgrove Community Centre.

The management committee of the Centre include representatives from the trade union Mandate, the Small Firms Association, the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, and other community activists. The funding for the Centre comes mostly from the Department of Enterprise and Employment.

When it comes to discussing the plight of job-seekers, Elaine seems to combine hard-headedness and an exceptional sensitivity.

"Our job", she says simply, "is to mediate people from unemployment to employment. We ask people what they want to do and tell them what they’ll have to do to get there. "We don’t knock people’s ambitions but we try to ground them in reality. I suppose most of the people we help end up in the low-skills sector."

Other clients are employers so the Centre wants to build up good links with them and not just throw anyone into any job and hope for the best. When asked whether talking to the Connolly’s advisers can be therapeutic for the unemployed, she simply replies "I don’t see that as part of our job". She speaks as one who has first-hand knowledge of the world of the dole office.

If she has a level-headed approach to joblessness, she also speaks with a deep compassion for the plight of the unemployed. "People unemployed for five or ten years suffer a great blow to their self-esteem.

You become quite demoralised and you don’t feel confident you can get work. What I’ve learned from my ten years working in unemployment information centres is the importance of talking to clients one-to-one, not to three of them across a table," says Elaine.

The Connolly Centre and herself both started dispensing information to the unemployed at around the same time; 1988, a year when cutting the dole queue was the political top priority. Then came the Celtic Tiger, and as the queues decreased, a certain image of the unemployed grew; that anyone left on the dole was freeloading on the Tiger’s back. Elaine profoundly disagrees with this idea.

"There are lots of long term unemployed people today applying for jobs and still being rejected," she says. "First of all they have to build up the confidence to apply in the first place." Nor does she think that job-seekers should be led into badly paid jobs with poor conditions. "Our job is not to lead people out of poverty in unemployment into poverty in a job."

Elaine is opposed to the proposal that benefits should be taken from those who do not accept any jobs or training courses offered. "Having been unemployed and working with the unemployed I think people should be encouraged and not threatened to return to work and training."

And about the constant accusations that some people forge a career out of continuous part-time FÁS courses, she is again careful in choosing her words: "I think a small minority of FÁS workers might be doing that, but by no means a lot of them."

She believes that the social welfare system as it is today is often too inflexible. "Say if you accept a Community Employment or Job Initiative course; your rent allowance will be taken off you. That’s a deterrent to taking a job.

"There should be a period in which you can hold on to your rent allowance for a certain amount of time. That’s the sort of change that should be made to the social welfare system. It used to be said in Ireland that the rising tide lifts all boats," Elaine concludes. "But now we can see, from the point of view of places like this Centre, that this just isn’t the case."