Long-term unemployment hurts whole families and can become an intergenerational problem.

Employers are reluctant to hire the long-term unemployed and more must be done to encourage them, according to the new junior social protection minister Kevin Humphreys.

Pressure is mounting on the Government to accelerate tax cuts for middle-income earners after a report showed they bore the brunt of the tax hikes in recent years.

The number of people on the live register has dropped below 400,000 for the first time since the collapse of the economy in 2009.

Death threats, knife attacks, physical assaults, verbal abuse, and attacks on security staff and members of the public are just some of the dangers Social Protection staff as well as dole claimants are facing in welfare offices.

Joan Burton, the social protection minister, has rejected calls for the restoration of Christmas bonus payments for welfare recipients saying it was not possible as the Government needed to keep control of spending.

Social rights groups have turned up the heat on the Government, demanding some budget cuts be overturned.

John Perry, the junior jobs minister, has been heavily criticised after he declared people were “emigrating by choice”.

Welfare claimants who have been overpaid by or who have defrauded the Department of Social Protection will have up to €28 a week automatically deducted from their dole payments under new budget rules being passed this week.

The high percentage of those on the Live Register who are long-term unemployed "is worrying and is growing", the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed has said, adding that job creation is now the State's main challenge.

Some 1,275 people have had their benefit cut because they failed to take up “reasonable” training courses or job offers.

The number of people on the dole for more than a year is at an all-time high, it emerged yesterday.

The number of people at work in Ireland has fallen to its lowest level since 2003, with just 1.7m people working at the end of March.

Ireland’s long-term unemployed now account for almost half of the country’s dole queues, despite the number of new people signing on stabilising.

GREATER efforts should be made to help the vulnerable and unemployed, according to a member of the troika, who appealed for hard evidence of the effects of the austerity programme on people.

CAMPAIGNERS say proposals to tax child benefit could force families into poverty and that the Government should instead target tax breaks for the rich.

The Government is not doing enough to promote employment at a time when massive job losses are being announced around the country, according to the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed.

A leading agency which assists people out of work has said the long-term unemployment rate has reached a crisis point.

REPRESENTATIVES for the unemployed have added to criticisms of job training courses and welfare services that were made in an alarming report on unemployment.

NEARLY 43,000 dole recipients could be abusing the social welfare system, according to Social Protection Minister Joan Burton, as she defended moves to get claimants off the system and back to work.

Job creation needs to be at the heart of any work the incoming Government does, according to the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed.

THE ranks of the long-term unemployed have grown to over 140,000, the Irish workforce’s highest ever.

THE Government “deliberately and cynically” allowed unemployment to rise in order to drive down wages, Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) president Jack O’Connor told a group of protesters yesterday.

THE Government was urged yesterday to put as much effort into tackling unemployment as the banking crisis as a minister pledged the number of unemployed would fall by around 30,000 in the coming months.

POLITICIANS who fail to back a campaign to protect those on lower incomes and the dole will be named and shamed.

Politicians and the public were today urged to pledge their support to protecting vulnerable households from further cuts.

The Live Register increased by 6,600 people in May, the largest monthly rise since August of last year.

The Government is being warned that it must produce a strategy to get the unemployed back to work as soon as possible.

A TASKFORCE set up last January to tackle spiralling unemployment, and which has only met once, has no plans to meet again and is essentially “defunct”, it has emerged.

A group representing the unemployed has today demanded that TDs and Senators to reject the Social Welfare Bill being debated today.

There has been more reaction from interest groups around the country.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan was this morning preparing to deliver his third budget in 14 months and one that is being widely regarded as the most important of a generation.

GOVERNMENT and Fás strategies to tackle unemployment are “fragmented, piecemeal” and “lack any vision on how the future jobs market is likely to be structured”, a leading employment expert has warned.

NEWLY unemployed people will have to wait until the new year to have their dole applications processed in at least four counties.

ON Thursday representatives of states from around the world will gather to sign an agreement aimed at strengthening the protection of economic, social and cultural rights for individuals.

The Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed have said that the poor are being asked to pay for the economic crisis after the publication of An Bord Snip's report yesterday.

OVER 70,000 of the 413,000 people now registered as unemployed are experiencing delays with their social welfare applications, it emerged last night.

The Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed has called for urgent and large-scale action to address the unemployment crisis.

The Minister for Social and Family Affairs says her department is examining the possibility of diverting social welfare cash to a scheme to save jobs.

The Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed is calling for unemployment to be placed at the top of the political agenda.

The Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed says it is extremely concerned about the rate at which people are losing their jobs.

NEWLY unemployed people are waiting for up to three months for their first social welfare payments in some parts of the country, Government figures have revealed.

PENSIONERS, the unemployed, widows and people with disabilities face an anxious wait to see if they will get their traditional Christmas social welfare bonus this year because of government cutbacks.

MORE jobs were created than lost in the past year, but overall employment growth has nearly slowed to a halt, with fewer than 600 people joining the workforce for every month.