Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Unemployment Blackspots: Discussion

9:30 am

Ms Susanne Rogers:

It is a difficult one to answer. This morning there was a news headline about migrant workers being abused. One individual had worked 48 days straight. That is where somebody is being disadvantaged and discriminated against. That is very clear-cut but it is also about the slights, people not putting their full address on their CV or their accent. It underpins all the other reasons people are not getting a callback for a job or to view an apartment. It is a difficult one to pin down. It is one I think a lot about. We are part of the organisations that are plugging and lobbying for socioeconomic status to be legislated for but it will be a difficult one to pin down.

It goes back to meeting people where they are at. Going back to the community training piece and education, people will say, "That's not for the likes of me.", but it is about saying something else is for them and they can do that. Sometimes, we seem to be asking people to transform themselves and become completely different, saying that what they are doing now is not good enough, is not right and they need to go and be better educated and get a better job, as opposed to saying that where they are is perfectly fine and asking them how we can help them flourish within that space. There can sometimes be a little bit of "We know what's best for you" and "We think you should". Those short programmes that meet people in the space they are at would be very beneficial.

The tenth ground of discrimination underpins all the others. The odds are that sometimes there will be discriminations that people experience that they may think are based on some of the others, but the core of it is down to where they are being viewed, and we are not supposed to have a class structure in this country, in the class structure. That is the key piece where they are being discriminated against.