MUSICIANS AND THE DOLE

If you're under 25 and out of work for six months, watch your back. That's the message from the Tánaiste Mary Harney, who announced plans last week to cut people off the dole after six months. Now I don't want to do our fine Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment an injustice. What she actually said was that those under-25 would be offered work, training or work experience once they were six months unemployed. "If they refuse that," she added, "they will be cut off."

Now this is 'tough' talk of the kind that appeals to the self-satisfied middle-classes, from among whose ranks the PDs get most if not all of their support. But of course it is not really tough at all - unless you consider the kind of school bully who picks on the weaker, more vulnerable kids in the playground tough.

Now I will make no secret of the fact that I am sick of hearing unemployed people being abused - whether by journalists, politician, employers or other vested interests. I am sick of reading about dole 'spongers'. And I am sick of listening to diatribes directed at individuals who are being accused of ripping off the system - as if there are citizens out there who take some kind of malicious pleasure in being on the dole.

People who are in comfortable jobs come out with this kind of bullshit all the time. But it bears little or no relation to the way in which men and women - or the vast majority of men and women at least - think or behave. Most people want to work. And they want to get a fair wage for it. But it's far easier for someone like Mary Harney - or someone like me - who has the benefit of a third-level education to achieve that kind of status than it is for 98% of the people who, at one time or another, end up on the live register. Talk about dole spongers is cheap. So are threats of the kind that Mary Harney made last week to cut people off from social welfare. And these threats are particularly cheap when they are directed at young people, who certainly cannot be accused of being the authors of their own misfortune in relation to employment opportunities - or the lack of them - especially in areas that are potentially interesting or fulfilling.

This is an issue that's of particular relevance to musicians. A lot of those who are involved in rock'n'roll at the start-up level collect the dole. Some of them - indeed many of them - do it for far longer than the six months that Mary Harney is proposing as a cut-off point. Many social welfare officers are decent, intelligent and sensitive people who understand what's involved. But clearly some don't and if they see some young musician's mug in the paper, accompanied by the news that their hot beat combo is doing a gig in the Music Centre or Eamonn Dorans, then they assume that the little sheister is ar mhuin na muice, and exploiting the system for all it's worth. In fact, being involved in a band costs money. With the investment that's required to get decent gear together, and the time and money that goes into practice, rehearsals, transport and recording, very few acts would show anything resembling a profit for two to three years, even without taking any cash out in wages.

There is a long and completely honourable tradition of people on the fringes of the arts supporting themselves with the dole. Some of them have turned out to be well-respected writers. Others have brought honour to the country through their achievements as musicians. Very often, what they need is a (decent) bit of space and time in which to develop their skills and establish the beginning, at least, of a reputation.

Now it's easy to target musicians (and writers and actors and so on), who are in this kind of position, to stigmatise them as spongers and to threaten to cut their social welfare payments off. But to what end? To force them into working in jobs for which they are utterly unsuited and which will inevitably stifle - and ultimately kill - the talent of the individuals involved?

This, of course, is the nub of the issue, where the attempt to coerce people into taking jobs, which some agency of the State has decided they should do, is concerned. Where is the justice in Mary Harney, or officials of the Department of Social Welfare, or employees of FÁS - deciding that some hapless individual should accept a job that they'd never even contemplate taking on themselves?

By all means, everything possible should be done to engineer a situation where employees of the State can assist unemployed people, constructively and well, in their search for appropriate training, and for work. But there is no room for coercion in this process. Trying to bully people off the dole is a mug's game - and potentially a costly one.

Forcing a bright young musician into taking a job as, say, a forecourt attendant might, actually, work. But cutting people from deprived or disadvantaged backgrounds off the dole because they refuse to accept whatever excuse for work is being foisted on them is likely to have another effect entirely.

If you leave individuals who are already alienated and on the margins with nothing, then they're likely to go and steal what they haven't got.

The more you trample on people, the greater the likelihood that they'll resort to crime. In that sense being heavy handed in the treatment of individuals claiming social welfare is unlikely to make economic sense, even within the crude logic of the so-called free market.

As ever, creative solutions are required. Given the amount of money that's floating around in the economy, these shouldn't be beyond us. It'll take a combination of imagination, courage and commitment to make serious inroads into the task of reducing the numbers of unemployed in Ireland.

Mary Harney would do well to recognise that bullying and bluster are not the answer.

• Niall Stokes

Editor