SIGNING ON:Our unemployed columnist finds it difficult to muster up enthusiasm for a society that seems to exclude him

HIS INTEREST in politics – always keen and at an all-time high prior to the 2010 General Election – is currently at a nadir. He no longer feels any of it is relevant. This does not mean he is disconnected from life – if anything, being unemployed has increased his empathy for the marginalised, the forgotten. But he can barely stomach speculative “opinion” pieces about the forthcoming Budget, €3.8 billion that needs to be found. Where’s the big mystery? The unemployed, the old, the very young and the very vulnerable will be made pay. Again.

The only news story he follows these days is that of Church’s attitude towards the Cloyne report, and towards survivors of clerical sexual abuse. He cannot help but feel cynical about proceedings; Enda taking on the Pope? Come on, we’ve heard enough empty rhetoric from our so-called “leader”, witnessed enough air-punching to know it is all a side-show. The man (understandably) relishes anything that distracts. And there is a cruel irony, at least from the unemployed man’s perspective, in Enda mouthing words like “dysfunction” and “disconnection”.

He can almost hear Enda’s advisers whispering, “Here’s a great photo-op. Look convincing, put a bit of ‘oomph’ into it, and people might believe . . .”

He no longer believes in Enda. Nor in Gilmore. And most especially not in Joan Burton, whose crass uttering about school-leavers and their “lifestyle choice” to fetch up on the dole shocked him to the core.

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He has been out of work for more than two years. This column – eight months old – has been his only regular gig and, though difficult to pen some weeks, has granted focus and clarity (though it, too, must end). Through the scores of letters received, he has learned much about the true nature of Irish people. They are generous, caring and deeply angry. They are also naive. Quite simply, they continue to elect the wrong people. Sometimes he feels there is a groundswell of hope – initiatives such as Senator Fiach Mac Conghail’s forum, for example – but there is something rotten in the State where the will of the people is blithely ignored. Almost as if they are were an irrelevancy.

(Dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, narcissism indeed!)

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Sometimes he visits the local newsagent and plays a game – it is possible to read as many as 20 pages of (in particular broadsheet papers) without coming across the word “unemployed”.

Media consensus. Or simply more narcissism and elitism?

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When he lived in Italy he saw how each village counsel had at least one representative of the unemployed. How action groups of unemployed men and students, or unemployed men and anyone who had a grievance (truckers, fruit sellers, nurses, civil servants) coalesced, almost naturally. Here the unemployed seem to sit around (and moan). The ability to organise, to militate and to dictate policy eludes.

(Something rotten in the psyche?)

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There are more people out of work than read this newspaper daily. Bizarrely, not one unemployed person has written to him directly. Wives of men out of work are the ones who reach out – as if the men themselves had opted to remain mute.

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Over the course of the eight months he has met three readers. One was a therapist who offered a form of therapy based on Lacan’s theories around language (and how it imprisons) which sounded fascinating, but for which he was not ready (too cynical?). Another, a businesswoman whose motivations were unclear. One reader he’d prefer not to write about – he got the feeling he was being used, heard (it is a small city) through the grapevine she had been bragging about helping “that poor man who writes for the Times”. She didn’t help. She held out false hope, talked about powerful contacts in his former areas of expertise, wasted hours of his time.

However, another man – refreshingly lacking in ego – has contacted him; it seems there is a possibility this individual (who understands hardship) can offer work.

There is always hope.

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Because of mounting debt and demands, the dole money no longer stretches a full week. He watches the fridge empty. Then the freezer. Then the larder. But they have never once run out of food (he has run out of petrol, and has more of less foregone use of the car in favour of the bike). And their children have never noticed. And are still laughing.

That’s more than many households on this blighted island can manage. Through no real fault of their own.