More than one in every four of Drogheda’s total labour of force of 17,879 are out of work according to official statistics for the month of October. Add in those who are engaged in Fas shemes like C.E. (Community Enterprise) and J.I. (Job Initiative) as well as various ”back to education” courses, and the town’s real unemployment figure is even worse.
The official Louth Live Register statistics for the month of October reveal that 4,799 people are “signing on” in Drogheda as against 3,053 in October of last year, an increase of 1,746 (or 57%) since October 2007.
Taking a figure of 17, 879, (source: Drogheda Council of Trade Unions / Drogheda Resource Centre) as a measure of the town’s total available labour pool, and using the official 4,799 on the live register, unemployment in Drogheda is presently running at a shocking 26.8%.
Indications today, Friday October 21st 0ctober, from Fas and a number of other reputable and reliable economic sources indicate that unemployment will continue to grow nationally through 2009 with at least 100,000 more people being thrown on the dole in the coming year. Some of these sources are privately indicating that the recession in Ireland could last for 7 – 10 years, a direct result of both the Government and the “official” Fine Gael-Labour opposition of collectively “looking the other way” all the way through the gold-rush residential building boom of the Celtic Tiger era.
Those of us on the genuine political left who warned that the real world would eventually catch up with the residential property rip-off (and the credit card consumer boom) were laughed at and labeled as being the ”looney left” by the political spivs who joined together nationally to tell us to back the Lisbon Treaty - and locally to drive through a proposal to build 7,200 additional houses (North Drogheda Environs Plan) along the northern fringes of the town over the next ten years.
This was the clearest possible indication that the town’s Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour political elite were quite content to see a continuing property boom in Drogheda that would line the pockets of auctioneers, land speculators and developers whilst the ordinary workers and the young families who were earmarked to buy these new houses would have had to imprison themselves in debt to pay mortgages on properties priced at well over twice their true and real value.
