In this weeks blog, NERI Co-director Paul Mac Flynn explores some of the key findings from his NERI Long-Read Series 'Covid-19 and the Future of Social Welfare'.
In describing the events of the last 12 months, it is possible that the word ‘unprecedented’ has been somewhat over-used. However, given the scale of the upheaval that has been experienced across all areas of the economy and society, it is also possible that we have forgotten just how far we have come since March 2020.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the financial support that has been provided to the labour market during the crisis. In both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, government has stepped up to provide economic security for vast swathes of the workforce in order to avert an unnecessary economic crash.
Ireland, north and south, has experienced its fair share of economic turmoil over the last century, but at no point has government assumed such a massive role in stabilising our labour market and our economy.
Of course all of this is in the context of a global pandemic and governments all around the world have, to differing degrees, assumed a similar support function. However, the novelty of a pandemic should not conceal one of the few positive policy achievements of the crisis.
In the latest edition of the NERI Long Read Series I explore what the Covid-19 policy response should teach us about our approach to unemployment in the future. It has important lessons for how we will go about tackling the climate crisis.
It would be convenient to think that as the vaccine rollout proceeds and the pandemic recedes, the labour market measures that have been put in place should simply fall away. This would be a mistake. A just transition to a zero carbon future is going to entail a significant disruption to our labour market over the coming years. We owe those that will give their jobs to save our plant just as much as we provided to those who gave up their jobs to save our health service. Building an effective and sustainable system of social security should be a legacy of this pandemic that we use to build a better economy and society.