In recent days press reports on briefings given by the Minister for Social Protection and senior officials in her Department have pointed to the beginning of a campaign to exert pressure on and harass unemployed people. Apparently, the Minister is to unveil next week a programme entitled, Pathways to Work. It has been stated every unemployed person in the State will be given a date by which he or she will be expected to be off the live register.
This is referred to in a sinister turn of phrase as the “prediction of exit date”, something one might associate more with sentencing in a capital trial rather than with how people who find themselves in difficult circumstances should be treated. If the unemployed person is not off the live register by that date, he or she will face what has been referred to as a “challenging interview”.
Apparently, senior officials in the Department are referring to this among themselves as “Operation Transformation”, a reference to an RTE project as part of which people who consider themselves to be overweight or seriously obese undertake a stringent programme to overcome the problem.
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