Social welfare took a hammering in December’s budget, with an overall reduction of €762 million to the state’s annual social welfare bill. But of all those affected by the cuts, unemployed people under the age of 25 will lose out most. Many young people now face a stark choice between emigration and trying to get by on a vastly reduced weekly payment.

The average cut to social welfare payments was 4.1% but young people’s dole has been cut by a much greater proportion. The jobseekers’ allowance has been slashed from €204.30 to €150 per week for new claimants aged 22 to 24, while the payment has been halved to €100 for those aged 20 and 21. Social welfare payments to the under-20s were cut to €100 back in April.

December’s cuts to social welfare passed after a heated two-day Dáil debate, with insults flying and plenty of heckling from the Opposition benches. But for all the outrage, there has been very little public indignation about social welfare cuts for the young. That’s got a lot to do with timing, according to Labour Youth chairman Rory Geraghty, who says the class of 2010 will be the first to feel the pain in large numbers.

“People will feel the cuts in May and June – if they haven’t yet, they will in a few months. It will be like the Christmas bonus – people will get angry when they realise what’s happened,” he says, referring to the government’s announcement last April that the annual double payment in December was to go by the board.

The latest live register figures show that the number of people signing on rose again in December 2009 by 3,300 to 426,700. Last month, there were 86,700 people under the age of 25 – the majority of them young men – on the live register, an increase of 35% on December 2009.
All indications are that things are going to get worse before they get better. The young people who lose their jobs or leave full-time education this year without the prospect of work will find themselves living on what can only be described as next-to-nothing.

So what is the government’s justification for cutting young people’s social welfare more than anyone else’s? Defending the social welfare cuts in the Dáil, Social Welfare Minister Mary Hanafin — whose salary as a Minister runs to six figures plus expenses — argued that “receiving the full adult rate of a jobseekers payment at a young age, without a strong financial incentive to engage in education or training, can lead to welfare dependency.

“It is considered particularly necessary to provide 20 and 21-year-old jobseekers with a strong financial incentive to engage in education or training,” she added.

The full adult rate (€196) of jobseekers’ allowance will only be paid to under-25s who participate in a PLC or FÁS training course. But with many unemployed young people educated to third and even fourth-level – often with vocational qualifications in areas like physiotherapy, engineering and architecture – it’s difficult to see how a PLC or FÁS course will increase their employability.
The Minister also believes that “people aged 24 or under without child dependents do not need an income of €196 per week.”

Geraghty believes that this thinking is based on the “ignorant assumption that all young people live with their mammy and daddy.”

“The government seems to assume that all people under the age of 25 live at home. That’s certainly not a reality. Call into any shelter in the inner city and you’ll see people as young as 14 who can’t live at home. There are people who are reliant on this money. These cuts will – it’s a fact – lead to an increase in homelessness,” he predicts.

Of course during the boom, as the price of houses and apartments spiralled beyond their means, many young people did continue to live at home, sometimes until they were in their 30s. It seems that Ireland grown used to the idea of a dependant – even parasitical – younger generation. We accept, almost without question, the notion of young people living at home at an age by which their parents had set up house by themselves.

But for those who find the thought of living at home oppressive and cannot, due to unemployment, afford to live independently, emigration is really the only alternative. Geraghty believes that this is one of the key reasons why young people have been targeted.
“It’s sending a message to young people to get out of the country, the government wants nothing to do with you. An awful lot of young people emigrate and when they move away they tend not to come back. And so they waive their right to vote in general elections – Fianna Fáil know this,” he claims.

When the government tried to scrap the medical card for over-70s in October, 15,000 people protested outside Leinster House – and the government, terrified, backed down. There were no cuts to pensions in the December budget. Should young people themselves shoulder some of the responsibility for the latest social welfare cuts? After all, they haven’t stood up for their interests in the way pensioners did, and they probably won’t inflict much damage at the ballot box. If you spend all day twiddling with your iPhones rather than taking an active interest in what’s going on in the country, surely you shouldn’t be surprised when the government bites you on the ass?
“You’ve got to understand that a lot of young people were out protesting too when the medical cards were cancelled. People feel that older people have paid their contribution to society,” argues Geraghty. “And with the amount of things that have been thrown at young people, there’s a tiredness out there. The college registration fee has increased to €1,500. We saw last February the highest number of young people ever out marching [against the reintroduction of third-level fees]. There are people out there that feel very disenchanted,” he says.

And for many Irish young people, prolonged unemployment only compounds that sense of apathy.