Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 29 September 2020
152. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach if he will consider amending the regulations for the collation of data for the live register in order to include persons with disabilities and those in receipt of a disability allowance in the live register since not to include them in the live register is to render them economically invisible and is discriminatory. [27229/20]
View answerThe Live Register, which is published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), is a short-term measure designed to provide information on the labour market and those in receipt of a number of benefits. The Live Register is compiled from returns made to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP) and comprises of persons under 65 years of age in the following classes:
• All Claimants for Jobseeker’s Benefit (JB) excluding systematic short-time workers
• Applicants for Jobseeker’s Allowance (JA) excluding smallholders/farm assists and other self-employed persons
• Other registrants including applicants for credited Social Welfare contributions but excluding those directly involved in an industrial dispute.
Although the Live Register is not designed to measure unemployment as it includes part-time, seasonal and casual workers entitled to JA or JB, it has however been used for many decades by the CSO as a key input in determining short-term trends in unemployment. The Live Register is a series which is of immense historical value and is available back to 1967 on the CSO’s StatBank tabular data service. Any amendment to the collation of the Live Register would have implications for the compilation of labour market statistics and the comparability of the Live Register over many decades.
Statistics on persons in receipt of Disability Allowance are published by DEASP in conjunction with the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES): https://igees.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/An-analysis-of-Disability-Allowance-inflows-and-outflows.pdf
