THE NUMBER of people signing on to the Live Register of unemployment benefit claimants increased modestly to 433,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis this month, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The rise of 600 people was a reversal of February’s trend, which saw a decline in the number claiming unemployment benefits. The March increase brought the standardised unemployment rate to 13.4 per cent.
This compares with 13.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to the latest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate from the Quarterly National Household Survey.
During the 12 months to March, there was an increase of 65,918 on the register, a rise of 17.9 per cent. This rate of increase is lower than the 24 per cent recorded in February. This is an indication that the rate of increase in unemployment appears to be stabilising.
Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar said unemployment had trebled since the Government came to power.
“The most worrying feature of today’s figures is evidence that more and more people are moving from short-term jobseekers’ benefit to long-term jobseekers’ allowance, as their stamps run out,” he said.
Sinn Féin enterprise spokesman Arthur Morgan accused the Government of pouring billions into a banking black hole, rather than job creation. “While a whole generation of young, educated and skilled people are leaving our shores, the Government are only intent on securing the futures of their friends in the banks,” Mr Morgan said. “The Ireland they are creating is not an equal or fair one.”
Labour’s Willie Penrose said Ireland was facing the prospect of long-term unemployment, and a repeat of the social damage which that had caused in the 1980s.
“Why is it that this Government can go hell-for-leather when it comes to bailing out the banks, but are entirely bereft of ideas, energy and creativity when it comes to tackling unemployment?” Mr Penrose asked.
Isme chief executive Mark Fielding said the true figures of those out of work are being masked by emigration, an increase in the numbers of people in State training and a rise in those staying on in education.
“A recent Isme survey confirmed that one in four SMEs anticipated reducing employment numbers over the next 12 months, which equates to a minimum of 60,000 jobs at risk in the SME sector,” he said.
Figures released yesterday by InsolvencyJournal.ie, a website run by accountancy firm Kavanagh Fennell, show that there was a 25 per cent increase in the number of businesses that became insolvent in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same period last year.
Some 402 businesses failed in the first quarter, with the insolvencies rippling through to sectors – including IT – that had previously recorded relatively low numbers of insolvencies.
