MEP Kelly has asked for Kiely’s resignation
MAYOR of Limerick Kevin Kiely, has come under attack from fellow councillor Maurice Quinlivan and a recently unemployed Limerickman, for what they described as insensitive remarks made by him in a national newspaper.
Mayor Kiely was reported as having said that unemployed people should be put to work sweeping the streets in return for social welfare payments.
Meanwhile, MEP Alan Kelly, hit out at the mayor for calling for the deportation of Eastern European workers if they are unemployed for more than three months as outrageous.
“The country is in economic turmoil at the moment and we as policy makers have a responsibility to come up with solutions, but racist comments like this have no place in the discourse and I believe that Cllr Kiely should now resign”.
Quinlivan told the Limerick Post that In the past, such harsh Victorian thinking led to the workhouse and breaking rocks on famine roads.
There are over 20,000 people unemployed in Limerick, including 10,000 males over the age of 25.
Limerickman Cormac Cullinan, made unemployed at Shannon three months ago, said that while there might be some merit in what the mayor was quoted as having said, he felt it was a rash comment rather than having been thought out.
“He could have taken it a stage further by suggesting that the doors of our prisons be swung open and inmates be allowed to do community work. That would be beneficial to them rather than having them locked behind bars.
“ I am unemployed but did not seek social welfare the day I lost my job. I opted to go back into education, as have so many more, in the hope of getting enough knowledge on how to start my own business”.
The majority of unemployed people, he added, were not in that position of their own making, and could not be classified as feeding off benefits.
“Another problem with the mayor’s suggestion is that employers might take advantage of what would be free labour, with the State paying out”.
Quinlivan described the mayor’s remarks as quite insulting to the hundreds of thousands of people who have recently lost their jobs and livelihoods through no fault of their own.
“It will surely come as somewhat of a shock to them to see that their own mayor has such little sympathy or understanding of their plight.
“To suggest, as Mayor Kiely did, that unemployed people are simply in receipt of free handouts and so should be forced to work for their social welfare payments is to ignore the fact that the vast majority of them spent many years paying tax and PRSI and as such, are entitled to some consideration when they hit on hard times.
“Having gone through the trauma of losing their jobs and facing the prospect of reduced social welfare payments as a result of the forthcoming budget, it seems that Cllr. Kiely now wishes to have imposed upon them the indignity of being forced on to hard labour schemes. In the past, such harsh Victorian thinking led to the workhouse and breaking rocks on famine roads.
“It is surely incumbent on public representatives to come up with something more original than blaming the unemployed for their plight and seeking to punish and degrade them.
“Instead, it would be more constructive to look at ways by which real and productive jobs can be created such as developing the public and social infrastructure, which as a society we failed to do during the years of the Celtic Tiger when much of our wealth was squandered”.
Mayor Kiely was not available for comment at the time of going to print.
