The government’s announcement of a new community service scheme for those registering for work for over five years is entirely laudable.

The scheme, the result of a budgetary measure announced for this year’s programme, was packaged this week as a means of deinstitutionalising the long-term unemployed who fall into a life of dependency on the social welfare system.

There is, however, another side to the measure – to crack down on those who simultaneously register as unemployed and receive the accompanying benefits and continue to work without declaring their labours. This has been a persistently hard nut to crack over the years, and starting from those who have been milking the system for so long is a very good starting point.

Those who have been unemployed for five years will face an ultimatum – to dedicate 30 hours a week to community service, and be paid 75 per cent of the stipulated minimum wage for their efforts, or be struck from the unemployment register and cease to receive their unemployment benefits.

The 30 hour per week requirement, which is to be dedicated to working for one of three non-governmental organisations or one of 60 local councils, leaves those defrauding the system very little time in which to work their “regular” undeclared jobs.

A proper monitoring of the new system will of course be key in ensuring the same abuses plaguing the current unemployment registration system do not transpose themselves into the new community service scheme.

All this, of course, is not to say that there are not the genuine cases – some of which are intergenerational – of people becoming bogged down in the welfare state and who have developed an aversion to work, content to continue living off state benefits.

In those cases, the scheme will undoubtedly help those who have real difficulties in finding work, or inspiring themselves to do so, by giving them a taste of being a more productive member of society while at the same time giving a contribution to the needs of society at large.