Government boasts about the booming state of the Irish economy "ring hollow" in the face of EU evidence that Ireland is bottom of the league for spending on social protection, the Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed (INOU) said yesterday.
The chairman of the INOU, Mr Barry McClatchie, said Ireland spends only some 20 per cent of its GNP on unemployment, health and the needs of the elderly, the lowest in the European Union, while the figure for many other states is around 30 per cent.
"These are not the sort of figures one expects to see when the country is in the middle of an economic boom," he said, "though see it you can in the classroom sizes and the hospital waiting lists."