Unemployment figures - Workers hit hard as TDs on long break

The figures released

They rose by a shocking 11,747 - or 7.1% - to 177,852, and reflect increases all over the country.

The depressing CSO figures were released the day after the Dáil rose for its three-month summer recess, and to the realisation that its incumbents had sat a grand total of 100 days since last year’s general election.

In other words, and to put it more graphically, our national parliament sat an average of one-and-a-half days a week, in the more than 12 months since the members were elected.

The cynical observer might well consider that the only difference between our almost one-day-a-week Dáil deputies and those unfortunately on the Liver Register, is that the former are paid very handsomely.

In the two days before it rose for the summer, the Dáil passed 11 pieces of legislation, an apparently unseemly haste in the rush to vacate the chamber.

Labour Party leader Pat Rabitte put it succinctly, if not as forthrightly as the electorate might, when he said the credibility of the House would continue to suffer as long as they did not order their business in a manner that is more commensurate with modern times and the workload with which the House has to deal.

Presumably, if our elected public representatives in the Dáil followed the example of their counterparts in the US Congress, the German and British parliaments, who take considerably less holidays, they would accomplish considerably more.

They would certainly be able to more assiduously devote more time to considering legislation, and the serious economic situation the country is mired in, if they pampered themselves less and took more realistic summer holidays like everybody else.

While they are on their ridiculously long summer break, the trend revealed yesterday by the CSO will continue with little, if any, abatement.

That trend is for the loss of 300 manufacturing jobs every week. Only days ago it was announced that 400 jobs were to go in three areas of the country. Since then, the Japanese pharmaceutical company in East Cork, Mitsui Denman (Ireland), revealed the plant is to close within weeks with the loss of almost another 100 jobs.

Unfortunately, there will be more joining the dole queues before the economic climate gets better in this country in the long term.

The current unemployment increases were felt all over the country but the midlands and the midwest were the hardest hit.

Confirming the gloomy news on the unemployment front, the Bank of Ireland job index shows the number of jobs being advertised in Irish daily and Sunday newspapers is running 12% behind the level of job advertisements at the comparable period last year.

According to its index, the public sector demonstrated the biggest drop in the advertisements for jobs in the public sector which, at 26% below last year, reflects the Government’s cap on the number of jobs in the public sector in the budget.

The private sector is down by 6.6% compared with this time last year.