Dole timeline

I've written several pages about my six years as an American on the dole in Ireland, unemployed or underemployed. Here I try to put these pages timewise. "dole-pages" and [dole-files -- done] I'd like to integrate these here.

• In autumn 2001, I received a tax number....

• July 2002 — working legally, but not quite sure how....

• The quasi-legality of my status in Ireland is peculiar.... — October 2002

• Pay people to not work: a modest proposal for ending forced labor in the developed world — 2004, Nijmegen The Netherlands.

• The woman who interviewed me at FÁS, the national employment agency, told me to go to the Social Welfare office and inquire about unemployment benefits. — January 2005

• On Ash Wednesday, 9 February 2005, I got my first dole payment, 124 euro for the week.

• Soon after I returned from The Netherlands to Ireland in January of 2005, I began receiving social-welfare payments, and I was on and off the dole until April of 2011.

• The day after Saint Patrick's Day of 2005, I made a decision. I'd stay on the dole for as long as I could....

• I want to write about being on the dole in Ireland — but there is a risk.... — August 2005

• I had to apply for rent allowance, knowing that it could bring the end of my time on the dole, and my time in Ireland....

• Health Service Executive informing me that they'd declined an appeal — 6 May 2011

• It's a long story — an email to friends and family near the end of my stay in Ireland

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