A drop of almost three percentage points in the long-term un employment rate has been welcomed by the Irish National Orga nisation of the Unemployed. The number of long-term claim ants - those signing on to the live register for a year or more - has fallen by 19,194 to 115,130 in the year to October 1997.
Long-term claimants account for 47.3 per cent of the total live register, a fall of 2.7 per cent on the previous year, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office yesterday. The number of short-term claimants - those signing on for less than a year - fell by 6,355 on the previous year to 128,115. Overall, the number of unemployed people on the live register fell by 25,549 to 243,481.