Let's stick with real reality here. The market place is flooded with unemployed people. The old reliables for jobs every year have dried up - Civil Service, Banks, ESB, Nursing, Telecom, An Post, etc. Employers are wary of expanding their business - Who would blame them? Emigration is the answer for many, but even this is drying up. The real outlook is bleak for somebody in his/her 20's let alone the 50's
The marketplace is flooded with people with low skills, no skills and the wrong skills.
We have marketing graduates and low level accountancy clerks and nurses and arts graduates and construction workers but not scientists or engineers or skilled IT people or the other skills that are required for the export sector.
We’ve taken on a number of people with construction trades qualifications with a view to retraining them but their attitude to quality is abysmal. It should hardly be surprising considering just how bad Irish building trades people are generally but when you see it up close it’s still shocking.