‘30% drop in off-farm employment being exposed by downturn’

THE Celtic Tiger hid a serious issue regarding jobs in rural areas, but that is now being unmasked by the economic downturn which has seen a massive 30% decline in off-farm employment, a Teagasc conference was told in Cork yesterday.

David Meredith, Teagasc Rural Economy Research Centre, said every individual living in rural Ireland did not benefit from the economic boom, but neither did it pass them by and affected them in a specific way.

“We had a situation when there were two primary industries in rural areas, agriculture and manufacturing, which had been in decline. People were losing jobs in those sectors. But people replaced these jobs by moving into construction.