Ballymun, Gis a Job.

So, Ikea will soon be coming to Ballymun. All they have to do is get past an An Bord Pleanála hearing (they have obviously checked the neighbouring fields for the bovine world's answer to Sergei Bubka), and they're in.

Isn't it great news. They're going to provide 500 local jobs, you know.

I know this because those who support the Ikea idea keep saying so. They keep telling us that Ballymun is one of the most deprived areas in the country. They keep telling us that the unemployment rate in Ballymun is three times the national average. That means that about 12% of the available workforce in Ballymun isn't working.

Amazing.

The Celtic tiger has been roaring for about 15 years now. We have created about one million jobs in this country during that time.

About five or six years ago we started to run out of people!

Imagine that. A country that 150 years ago had a population of over 8 millon suddenly starts to run out of people!
So we started to import them - as you do. We looked everywhere. Behind the bicycle sheds. We found a couple of dozen dossers there and put them to work. Edenderry. A few more dozen there - all related. Put them to work too. Then we ran out. Not an able bodied worker left in the country and still 200,000 jobs to be filled.

So in came the Poles, the Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Nigerians, Corkonians.

All sorts.

And we put them to work too.

Now we have full employment, which for some reason means that 95.8% of the workforce has a job.

So how come 12% of Ballymun is unemployed.

Whisper it.

Maybe they dont want a feckin' job!

They've had fifteen years of the Celtic feckin' tiger and they couldn't find a job in all that time so what the hell makes these idiots think that they've just been waiting for the right Swedish-put-it-together-yourself furniture giant to come along and take them by the hand and bring them into the nice, shiny new shop and pat their hands reassuringly and say, 'now, you just sit there and everything will be all right - and we'll be paying you at the end of the week too.'

You know, sometimes I just want to give up. About three or four times most days. I probably listen to too much radio for my own good. Feckin' Joe Duffy.

It's a generalisation, but its true. In a full employment economy, if you don't have a job, then you probably don't want one.

Any questions?