Workers Solidarity Movement

Reading all that budget analysis you'd be forgiven for thinking that the unemployed were unaffected by the budget by and large; and you'd be wrong.  None of our news commentators in the mainstream media made much of the dramatic cut to the circumstances of the unemployed. A single person on the dole in rented accomodation is going to be €432 worse off this coming year.

Firstly they, like all others on welfare, will lose €120 in fuel allowance as 6 weeks are being cut and secondly they will have to come up with €312 a year in rent as the allowance gets cut by 6 euro a week. Thats a cut of about €8.30 per week or about 4.5%.  Of course this affects anyone on welfare needing rent supplement or in receipt of fuel allowance. Effectively welfare has been cut but without the headlines - another nasty little christmas gift from Labour and Fine Gael.

Another remarkable statistic from the budget was that 330,000 workers are earning less than €10,000 per year, again something that did not rouse our many media outlets to any comment. 440,000 unemployed, 330,000 earning less than €10,000 p/a. Not exactly sharing the pain when there are also 34,000 people earning over €1 million p/a here, are we?

WORDS: James McBarron