Government policies to address the economic crisis could cause long-term damage and a "collapse in the mental health of huge swathes of the population," one of the State's leading social policy analysts has warned.
Dr John Sweeney, economist with the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), said the challenge was not to cut public services to the bone, but to embark on their "radical transformation".
Addressing the 6th annual Social Inclusion Forum, hosted by the NESC, Dr Sweeney said the core social objectives of the Towards 2016social partnership agreement remained correct.
Its vision included a strong role for public services and inclusion of voices from the community and voluntary sector.
"The challenge is to reorganise how we deliver on the core objectives. We must accept delivering the objectives is going to take longer."
There was a danger, however, the Government in seeking to address the "perilous economic times" would "throw the baby out with the bathwater".
He described as "extraordinary" the fact that the McCarthy report on public spending did not reference the Towards 2016agreement.
"What we've got to do is reprioritise, to frontload the objectives that are most seminal in delivering the most important social objectives."
Behind the unemployment figure of 12.4 per cent lurked the challenge not to repeat the 1980s - characterised by the long-term damage of long-term unemployment.
"It brought with it an erosion of skills, erosion of confidence and the collapse in the mental health of huge swathes of the population, caused by chronic unemployment.
"It is not the level of unemployment we should be keeping an eye on but the duration. We should be watching the numbers applying for disability allowance, withdrawing altogether from the workforce, so dispirited, so discouraged.
"One of the lessons of the 1980-s was that a dispirited, long-term unemployed and inactive section of people persisted long after recovery had set in."
Government policies had not done do well in reforming services through the boom. Quoting influential British social policy analyst, Julian Le Grand, he said the flood of money into public services had slowed reforms.
"It has been easier to do things in the old way and just do more of them," he said. We now had "no option" but to radically reform public services, to make them more responsive but also to act in ways that encouraged people into training and "activation".
"The evidence from well-performing countries is good levels of income supplements must be combined with training.. Someone, somewhere must be able and willing to take on the role of employer of last resort," he said.
Demands on public services would steadily increase. "That's what happens in a recession."
The result would either be critical cuts and shortfalls in services or radical reform and transformation across the business of public services.
