asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he will state the number of persons who made application for unemployment benefit at the beginnning of the period, June to October, the number who were in receipt of the full ten weeks' benefit, and the number who were in receipt of five weeks' benefit; also, if he can give an estimate of the number of persons who will be entitled to draw the full amount of benefit during the current period, and the number who will be entitled to draw benefit for eight weeks and for four weeks.
CEISTEANNA—QUESTIONS. ORAL ANSWERS. - UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT.
The information required by the Deputy is not available precisely in the form in which he asks for it. Claims were made at the commencement of the Third "Benefit Year" on the 30th June, and continued to be made throughout the period ending on the 29th October. No daily record of the number of claims lodged has been kept, but the total number of claims made in the whole period was 82,908. Of these 3,279 were disallowed (because either the statutory conditions were not fulfilled or statutory disqualification had been incurred), and 76,509 were allowed, in the first instance. I have given an analysis of this total in reply to Deputy Johnson. For the answer to the last part of the question I would also refer to the reply just given to Deputy Johnson.