ESRI report - Unemployed face barriers to find work

It seems ludicrous that while about 88,000 people came from the new EU member-States in the last eight months and almost all of them found employment, that 150,000 Irish face obstacles in re-joining the workforce.

Obviously, this rather perplexing situation has prompted Social Affairs Minister Seamus Brennan to stress the need to look at reforms of the current system needed to prevent people from falling into long-term unemployment.

He launched a report yesterday by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) which has identified age, gender, marital status, education and literacy, as among a number of factors which are barriers to people finding work.