So far, all the signs would seem to indicate that the first half of 2009 will be worse than the last quarter of the year just gone by. The world economy will be in turmoil for some time, with no obvious prospect that global business will recover just yet.In Ireland, the last year saw the bottom fall out of the property market with surplus housing all over the place and a sharp downturn in the real economy occasioned by the wider banking crisis and credit crunch.
It is still something of a wonder that no Irish bank has gone to the wall. A period of consolidation and forced mergers seems to be in the offing. The former Bank of Ireland chief executive Michael Soden predicted some years back that probably only one Irish-owned bank can possibly compete and sustain itself in the long term as an internationally traded bank.
That long term is very much close at hand, and it seems only logical from this vantage point that moves must be made in the short- to medium-term to make that a reality. Rules around State aid and Government intervention in the financial system have now been well and truly thrown to the wind.
Unemployment and a near collapse in retail sales will only add to the woes of the economy. There has been a very steep rise in joblessness, but in particular among the immigrant population. When the unemployed figures are combined with those departing, they illustrate that most immigrants came here to work.
In terms of what we understand about the immigrants who chose Ireland as a destination, we know that they are (courtesy of the CSO survey of 2006) predominantly EU citizens, between the ages of 18 and 44 and over-qualified for the kind of work they do in the economy.
Side-by-side with this population, there are 300,000 Irish people who have left school without the basic leaving certificate qualification and were identified by Forfas as being in need of a skills and training upgrade.
Hopefully this disparity in training and educational levels between some cohorts of the immigrant and the indigenous population will not lead to pronounced tensions in the jobs market as both groups compete for increasingly scarce full-time employment.
There are welcome signs over the past year that Irish employees or potential employees are beginning to compete for relatively low-skill jobs in the hospitality sector which, during the 10 years of the boom, they had virtually stopped or given up. Recruitment consultants are seeing signs that the Irish are now going for positions that were previously left almost entirely to immigrants to fill.
In the 18–44 working age demographic, immigrants in Ireland tend to have a third level degree, and are actually more likely to have such a qualification than the indigenous population of the same age group.
There is a need for the State training agency Fás to do a focused training pitch to those immigrants with specific training needs in terms of our labour market. Many of those doing jobs beneath their qualifications could easily be upgraded into higher orders of work.
This should be done precisely because already we are beginning to see resentment being expressed by some people in medium- to low-skilled positions, complaining that they are losing their jobs to immigrant labour. But more importantly, it should be done so that the economy can make a productivity gain if and when it does recover.
One of the most difficult things to deal with in immigration matters worldwide is the prospect of lower-skilled indigenous labour losing out to higher-skilled immigrant labour that is itself over-qualified for the work it is competing for. This can be a breeding ground for incipient and actual racist sentiments.
The year ahead will be a challenging one for the economy, but hopefully it will not see nation states retreating into a narrow definition of their self interests that leads to a period of reversal into notions of sovereignty, home preference and creeping protectionism in world trade terms.
Conor Lenihan TD is Minister for Integration and represents the constituency of Dublin South West, which includes Tallaght, Greenhills, Firhouse, Templeogue and Bohernabreena
