Why youth unemployment is our greatest challenge

Since becoming Dublin’s MEP in February of last year I have been championing the cause of a European Youth Guarantee as a practical EU response to the unprecedented rise in youth unemployment.

I do so from the perspective of my own personal experience as well as my work as a former Lord Mayor and now as Dublin’s MEP.

I graduated from university during the last recession in the 1980s and saw many of my closest friends emigrate.

Having spent one year abroad, I decided that emigration was not for me.

I approached FAS about my employment prospects. I was shocked to be advised that I should accept I could have no future in this country as an arts graduate or a qualified teacher and it would be

“for the best

? if I emigrated.

I resolved at that stage not just to stay in Ireland, but to become politically active and work to reverse the trend of youth emigration. I joined my local Labour Party branch in Drumcondra and went on to become a councillor for the North Inner City and subsequently Lord Mayor of Dublin in 2009/10.

In 2009 as the current recession took hold, I priortised unemployment as the greatest challenge facing Dublin City.

I established the Lord Mayor’s Commission on Employment, the findings and recommendations of which are now firmly embedded in the Dublin City Development Plan.

As Dublin’s MEP over the past year I have travelled the length and breadth of Dublin City and County.

There is not a community in Dublin that has not been touched by unemployment and emigration.

I have met with the Southside, Northside, Dodder Valley, Ballymun/Whitehall, Ballyfermot and Fingal Partnerships. I hosted an Employment Information day with statutory agencies and voluntary and youth groups in the North West Inner City.

I have also engaged with youth organisations such as the Base in Ballyfermot, Nutgrove Youth Service, Whitechurch Youth Centre and St Andrew’s Resource Centre.

Everywhere I went, I witnessed at first-hand the corrosive impact of youth unemployment on Dublin’s talented and educated young people. And I have also seen the considerable and amazing community efforts that are being made to combat unemployment.

That is why I have consistently campaigned for the introduction of a European Youth Guarantee programme, based on what works in European countries such as Austria, which has a youth unemployment rate of eight per cent.

The Youth Guarantee is aimed at ensuring that a young person is offered a quality job, education/training placement or an apprenticeship within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education.

What is fundamental about this approach is that it seeks to identify and meet the needs of each young person, rather than simply slotting them in to a pre-existing scheme.

Last week, the European Union agreed to frontload e8 billion of EU spending to kick-start youth employment.

This funding will be allocated primarily through the Youth Guarantee programme in 2014 and 2015. Pilot projects will soon be established across Europe, including, hopefully, one in Ballymun.

How the Youth Guarantee is implemented will be crucial. The Government now has to present plans to Brussels to draw down Ireland’s allocation of the e8 billion by the end of the year.

In preparing these it must work closely with young people and community groups, particularly those in areas blighted by high levels of youth unemployment. It must also ensure that high-quality jobs, education, training and apprenticeships are offered to young people.

If implemented correctly, I am convinced that the Youth Guarantee programme can give hope to young people in Dublin by showing them that Europe can deliver for them. I am determined to see that it does.