With virtually full employment in Ireland, it's now rare for a 'profoundly middle-class' twentysomething to sign on. Zac Murtagh finds out what it's like.
'You were supposed to be here at 10 this morning," the official says. I frantically try to think of an excuse, but the blank expression on the other side of the screen stops me. "Doesn't matter. Join the queue for desk two."
To be signing on for the first time, aged 26, at the start of the winter, wasn't something I'd planned. I'd just finished a master's degree in journalism and spent two months on a music magazine. I'd also been working part-time for another media company, but the shifts stopped after I took the union side in a dispute with management.
Everyone I talked to had a different story about why they were on the dole, but a universal rule applies on the monthly signing-on day: show up late and you go to the end of the line. A chain of people, stretching from the entrance to the claims desk at the other end of the room, can be disheartening. Sometimes the place was soul-destroying.
Long waits aren't the worst part, though. They mean you've got through the red tape and the assessment interview. I had survived, but I wasn't entirely unscathed. After admitting that my name was on the lease of the two-bedroom apartment I was sharing, I was told my flatmate's rent would count as means from other sources. The result was that my weekly allowance was slashed from €165 to €78. I was entitled to apply for a rent-interest supplement, but I couldn't face more forms. I borrowed money from my brother to get through Christmas and vowed to find a job.
Another problem with my claim was my that I'd thrown away my rejection letters. Had I been trying to get a job? Yes. Did I have the paperwork to prove it? Not quite. I'd been turned down for numerous jobs. Jobs in journalism, jobs outside journalism and any jobs that seemed vaguely related to journalism. I knew things were bad when I was turned down for a position I hadn't even applied for: a radio station said I wasn't quite producer material, even though I had applied to be a researcher.
The official took me at my word when I explained that jobs in journalism aren't as numerous as jobs in call centres. I felt lucky: these are supposedly the halcyon days of Irish employment, with only 4 per cent of the population out of work, compared with 13 per cent in the early 1990s. Economic prosperity is apparently changing the face of Dublin, but Thomas Street, where I signed on, is testament to continuing inequalities.
Trendy coffee shops nestle at the end closest to Christ Church while discount supermarkets sit at the other. In between, heroin-chic art students and their tragic role models, the real addicts, compete to look like the living dead. In the busy launderettes and on the market stalls, Europeans, Asians and Africans mingle, seemingly oblivious to Irish class divides. I guiltily realised that, until I came here for my dole, I was equally unaware.
I signed on recently for what will, with luck, have been the last time and, for a change, I got in early. I was just about at the claims window when I realised I had forgotten my iPod. So, rather than listen to music, I looked around. I read posters advertising everything from local puppet theatres to helplines for domestic violence and for reading and writing classes. I noticed the cheerful blue doors and seats, set off by peach walls and tiles. I saw men swapping newspapers and young mothers joining forces to stop children crying.
The inescapable truth, I concluded, is that I'm profoundly middle-class. I hide between my earphones for fear of people talking to me. I've never known what it's like to be long-term unemployed.
I have friends who sponged off their parents for years, to avoid the social stigma of accepting government welfare. I know others who signed on for a while, just to titillate themselves with a frisson of living on the other side of the tracks. I did it simply because I couldn't get the type of job I wanted.
It has been unforgettable: frustrating, funny at times and, most of all, educational. Recently a friend has offered me some shifts as a banquet waiter. It's not quite journalism but at least he's promised to let me write up the menu cards. Looking back, my dole experience was worth much more than €78 a week. But for now, I'm signing off.