Looking for work? Good news- courtesy of the government's 'Jobbridge' scheme, there's all kinds of full-time opportunities on offer. The Corner Bakery in Terenure is looking for a Bakery Assistant. The Landsdowne Hotel in Ballsbridge is looking for waiting staff. Axa Assistance is looking for a call centre worker in Athlone. You'll even get an extra €50 euro a week.

In recent weeks and under much fanfare the government has launched a new scheme to create 5,000 internships by pairing applicants with a large number of participating companies, including KPMG, Tesco, Aer Lingus, Glanbia, Quinn Group Ltd, HP, ESB, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Bord na Móna.

The youth protesters in Spain have inspired many with the stand they have taken against austerity policies and the political establishment. However, they have also faced brutal state repression.

The last few months have seen one thing sweeping across the island’s politics – austerity. The governments north and south are shifting the consequences of the greedy bankers to ordinary working class people, with young people being particularly hard hit. Youth unemployment is at an all-time high and very expensive university degrees are becoming worthless.

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In advance of the election the Socialist talked to Cian Prendiville, the youngest candidate in the country and a member of the Socialist Party. After the election, we caught up with him again.

A huge protest brought Belfast city centre to a standstill as over two thousand young people, mainly school students, showed their opposition to £9,000 a year tuition fees for nearly 4 hours.

An indication of the fierce opposition the Government can come up against when attempting to implement its brutal 2011 budget, was shown at the massive student demonstration on 3 November. Over 30,000 students demonstrated in Dublin, in what was reported to have been the ‘largest student protest in a generation’. 

At a recent meeting of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, universities were accused of acting “unlawfully” and “illegally” in making unauthorised payments to staff.

When I had finished college in 2008, I had hoped to get into a job but because of the disastrous state of the Irish economy at that time, this was never going to happen. So like many others I ended up joining the dole queue for a while.