Charlotte Ryan | Contributing Writer
A photo stunt protesting the recent cuts to Jobseeker’s Allowance for those under 26, and involving a number of youth organisations, took place yesterday outside Leinster House on Kildare Street. A collaboration between young workers, the unemployed and students, the stunt was a response to the disparaging comments made by a number of government ministers that the youths of Ireland should not be “at home watching a flat-screen television seven days a week”.
In a statement issued yesterday, USI President Joe O’Connor said:
“Today’s stunt shows the dismal situation that many young people are experiencing and just how separated our decision makers are from this reality. If this cut goes ahead many highly skilled and highly qualified young people will be forced into emigration.”
The image on one side portrays young people unable to find work and now expected to manage on €100 a week surrounded by rejected job applications, watching political decisions being made on their behalf on a small TV. On the other side are characters representing the Taoiseach, Tanaiste and Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton, enjoying glasses of champagne as they watch young people emigrate. In anticipation of the debate on the Social Welfare Bill next week, the question put forward by these groups is “Senators: Which side are you on?”
The photo stunt was organised by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), We’re Not Leaving, Mandate Youth, ICTU Youth, SpunOut.ie and the Young Workers Network with the intention of highlighting the strain of this cut on young people and its likely consequences.
Ronan Burtenshaw from We’re Not Leaving said:
“Young People in Ireland are currently in a crisis – youth unemployment around 30% for four years, 26 applicants for every job and around half a million in total emigrated since the recession began, majority of them young. Asking people to live on €100 per week until they are 24 is a kick in the teeth to a generation already struggling with joblessness, emigration, fee hikes, unpaid internships and other problems.”
These same groups will also be lobbying at the Seanad to have the €32 million cut overturned and replaced with a commensurate increase in the banking levy. As Burtenshaw stated:
“It’s time that young people were seen as the valuable part of this society that they are, and not just cannon fodder for a crisis they did not create.”
