Border towns have worst jobless rate
With the release of the figures, the Sinn Féin TD for Louth, Arthur Morgan, called for a new jobs decentralisation strategy and said economic development and regeneration policies promised under the Good Friday Agreement had not filtered through to border regions.
High unemployment levels of 19% in towns such as Castleblayney and Dundalk were more than double the national average, he said.
The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office, extrapolated from last year's Census, show Enniscorthy in Wexford and Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary are also unemployment blackspots.
In contrast, the figures show employment is highest in the east of the country, particularly in towns within the greater Dublin area. Swords was highest at 71%, followed by Naas, Celbridge and Navan where an average of 68% are in the labour force. Those towns also had the biggest proportion of women working at 57% to 61% compared with an overall national rate of 47%.
Despite the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) estimate of unemployment at 4.2%, the 2002 Census confirms jobless figures at 8.8%. The CSO said the Census was a complete enumeration while the QNHS was a sample survey.
The Census showed more people were out of work, 9.5%, in urban than in rural areas, 7.9%.
Deputy Morgan said the statistics confirmed the appalling unemployment problems existing in the Border region. "The figures demonstrate nothing has changed over the past three decades in the border counties. "This region has been passed over by successive governments for far too long. We need to see increased investment in infrastructure along with government support for the development of indigenous industries in border areas."
The Census figures also reveal that over two decades the number of male carers in the home increased dramatically from 1,041 in 181 to 21,353 last year. At the same time, the number of women carers fell significantly from 661,510 in 1981 to 417,633 in 2002.
Other statistics to emerge show nearly 20% of people in Killarney, Galway and Kilkenny are employed in the hotel industry compared to a national average of 5%.
