Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 30 Jun 1994

Vol. 444 No. 7

Written Answers. - Employment Statistics.

Tony Gregory

Question:

42 Mr. Gregory asked the Minister for Social Welfare if, arising from his reply to Parliamentary Question No. 67 of 23 June 1994, the statistics for the number of unemployed in Dublin's inner city have already been made available to the inner city partnerships by a section of his Department.

Minister for Social Welfare (Dr. Woods)

Parliamentary Question No. 67 of 23 June 1994 requested the percentage increase in the number of unemployed in Dublin's inner city over the past two years.

Information on levels of unemployment is maintained and published by the Central Statistics Office. This information is largely, although not exclusively, based on data supplied by the local offices of the Department of Social Welfare and on the Live Register numbers at those offices. The reply to the earlier question indicated correctly that statistics are not kept by the Department in a way which enabled the claimants living in particular areas to be identified and consequently to measure, as requested changes in the number of such claimants over a period of time. This is the factual situation.

From time to time special surveys are carried out by my Department to identify categories of claimants or claimants living in particular areas. These are done for research or operational reasons or on special request.

Further examination of this matter now confirms that at the request of the Dublin Inner City Partnership a special survey was done in 1993 and again recently to estimate the number of unemployed people in specified inner-city areas. These surveys were done as an exceptional measure and they required considerable time and effort. The data, while reasonably indicative for the purposes of the partnership, were not subject to the normal level of validation which is applied to formally published statistics such as the Live Register data. The results of the first of the two exercises no longer appear to have been retained in the Department as they were not required for administrative purposes. Consequently the percentage movements in numbers over the last two years are not available.

My Department makes every effort to respond positively to requests where possible within tight resource constraints and the time limit available for replies to parliamentary questions.

The 1994 exercise showed some 14,530 registered unemployed on the Live Register in the areas covered by the special survey, i.e. postal districts 1 and 2 and parts of districts 4, 7 and 8.