Brute force backs up bankrupt Irish capitalisı

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The announcement last week that the Irish bourgeois government is unlikely to meet its target of creating 20,000 new jobs by the end of the year underlines the huge problem of unemployment in Ireland as a whole.

In the South, although official figures carefully leave out school leavers and farmers, economists now Dear Editor, I would like to supplement the report on the Garners Day of Action in last week's Socialist Press by emphasising the scale of the defeat inflicted on the estimate that around 11% of the 1 million-strong labour force is without a job.

And in the North, where official figures exclude women and youth, even the government figure shows 11.8% out of work.

A survey of schools in West Belfast conducted last November showed a staggering 53% of school leavers still unemployed six months after leaving school.

This is despite the lavish cash handouts offered by the British government to British and foreign monopolies if they set up factories in the North, and numerous fraudulent "job creation" and training schemes which cover over the full scale of unemployment.

The reality is that the capitalist system cannot provide stable jobs or decent living standards for workers either North or South of the artificial, imperialist-drawn "border"

Lynch •The type of investment attracted to these areas of chronic unemployment seeks to exploit the depressed wage levels and the low levels of taxation which flow from primitive social services, health and education facilities.

But they also bring in the latest technology, using government grants to assist the setting • up of increasingly capital-intensive factories.

This also means that, the North, such investment is concentrated on the areas where skilled workers, advanced communications and other facilities are exploitation, repressive measures are needed both North and South.