An old friend of mine used to regularly take out a word and fondle it like a friendly animal. A very Irish amusement, I think. One particular favourite was the word “worrying”, as in dogs “worrying sheep”. No fun for the sheep farmer, but a great concept for the wordplayer.

Recent weeks have seen a lot of us worrying the unemployment figures, in the manner of sheepdogs. The latest official figures show that 280,200 people were out of work in the Republic at the end of October, compared with 279,500 at the end of September. The Government claimed that “the continuing actual fall in the numbers out of work - to the lowest figure since May 1992 - provided evidence of the success of the Government’s employment policies.”

Needless to say, Opposition spokespersons were quick to shove the boot in without saying anything remotely constructive. And the unions were not far behind, with Bill Attlee of SIPTU telling a union conference that the promises made in the Programme for Competitiveness and Work on job creation and tax reliefs had not been met and that workers and the unemployed were getting frustrated.

The predictable bluster notwithstanding, the impression remains of an extraordinarily uncritical acceptance of the present dull consensus.

There are exceptions. In a recent Sunday Tribune article, Cathal Guiomard lambasted what he described as 30 years of economic devastation. He cited many targets, among them former Central Bank Governor Maurice Doyle who, in a 1993 speech, described the Irish economy as “one afflicted by a severe case of sclerosis” and called for fundamental restructuring. As the writer points out, many would agree. “But”, he adds “a little small voice asks, was not Mr Doyle himself part of the economic structure that he now condemns?”

Indeed. As was Dr Garret Fitzgerald, who writes a weekly column in the Irish Times. As Guiomard acidly comments “you would never think from Dr Fitzgerald’s newspaper columns that he himself had any hand act or part in the creation of the economic status quo that he now condemns.”

A group of employers were talking to Gay Byrne recently. They all had jobs on offer which they couldn’t fill. Not big, high powered jobs. Just plain old semi-skilled ones. Like the man in the rag trade, who urgently needed experienced machinists to show the younger machinists the ropes. But he couldn’t get any, he said, because PRSI made it so expensive to employ them on the one hand, and anyway, he couldn’t compete with what they were entitled to on the dole. He wasn’t a ranter, out to make a political point. He didn’t actually say it in so many words, but that’s what he meant.

Which returns us to the consensus. Effectively, over the last ten years or so, we in Ireland have bought into a new vision. It is the high wage, high-tech economy. Our social welfare provision reflects this, and all our conventions demonstrate it.

This consensus encompasses the unions, who have strongly resisted any dilution of the high wages and comparatively privileged positions of many workers (vis-a-vis the unemployed).

There is a much more radical and contentious approach. Should we, for example, be actively considering a four-day week at 80% pay (the nett decrease would be a great deal less after tax). We would also be eroding overtime. Neither of these is an answer to mass unemployment, but both would clearly help to spread employment.

The problem is this: a high-wage hi-tech economy works best where you have low population growth and a stable population structure, as they have in Germany and Holland. Where you have high population numbers in vulnerable age brackets, the pursuit of this modern capital-intensive economy leads to high unemployment.

No one actor on the stage is to blame. All are guilty of misreading the situation: with large numbers entering the labour force each year, we need a labour-intensive economy, not its inverse.

As things now stand, either the dole, or a FAS Community Employment Scheme, in which one can retain a whole rake of benefits, is the only sensible choice for very many. And don’t get me wrong: a great deal of exceptional work is done on these courses. But meanwhile, many industrial vacancies go unfilled, because the employers, existing on very tight margins themselves, cannot offer the same level of extra supports to the workers.

Nobody intended this: it is simply the accidental aggregation of small incremental changes, all of them constructive within their own frames of reference, and all of them, to use that great soccer phrase, well meant.

Clearly, one cannot turn the whole thing over, and set about making poor people poorer. But at the same time, it is important to re-establish that the workplace is a good place to train people. That rag trade employer who spoke to Gay Byrne wanted older employees who would show the younger ones what to do, who would, if you like, mentor them. Well, that sounds like training to me, and offers a way out of the imbroglio.

In Germany a lot of training is done on-the-job. Senior employees are regarded as trainers, and are trained as such. The adoption of this approach here would mean that new trainer/supervisor grades could be established in labour-intensive firms, funded by EC Structural Funds. And there are other strategies that should be considered, such as Skills Co-operatives.

Whatever, the priority is to establish a new consensus, that jobs will be created for all, and to consign the dreary mantra of the last eight or nine years, that there will never be full employment, and that work as we know it is finished, to the dustbin of futurology.

Because, there is more than enough work for all. But we have forgotten how to connect it up with those who might do it. Everybody has to learn new concepts: eight month years, 32 hour weeks, seasonal fluctuations,none of these should be ruled out. Why should those in skilled or professional jobs be different from their more casually employed counterparts? Why should the well heeled get better heeled, if it is at the expense of their neighbours?

But at root, it comes down to guts. Have we the collective bottle to find new and creative ways out of all this, or are we content to sit on our arses and collect the German taxpayers’ beneficence for as long as it lasts?

Meanwhile, in case anyone thought that the world is getting safer, recent newspaper articles highlighted how it ain’t. The Observer had a piece on the increasing threat of an environmental catastrophe in the former Soviet Union’s nuclear industry. Leaked documents talk of ‘gross violations of techniques and technical regulations’, ‘containers without radiation hazard markings’, ‘no state system of control and accounting of nuclear materials in Russia’ . . .

A meltdown is possible at any time. Their waste is, literally, all over the place. They need large amounts of money and fast, but Western politicians are not persuadable. They are more concerned about gangsters selling plutonium off the back of a lorry. The horrible truth is that, bad as that might be, the other stuff poses a far greater risk. Remember Chernobyl . . .

And finally back to Ireland. I see that the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation has advertised for submissions. I don’t propose to reprint their ad (perhaps they should run it in Hot Press), except to say that you (individually or collectively) can present a written submission. Address it to The Secretary-General, Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, Dublin Castle, Dublin 2, to arrive not later than December 1st 1994.

Already, it seems, some of the visitors to the Castle from Northern Ireland have been taken aback at the grandeur of the venue . . . what with its opulent rooms and portraits of Lords Lieutenants and Viceroys and Kings and Dukes and Whatnots.

One of these days, Gerry Adams and his team, and David Ervine and his, will be invited to the Mansion House in Dublin, where they will have the opportunity to ponder the Lord Mayor’s chain, the centrepiece of which is a large medal featuring the gay King Billy on his horse. Funny, isn’t it?

Especially when you realise that the medal on the Lord Mayor of Belfast’s chain reads “Erin Go Brágh”.....