asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will state the total number of persons drawing unemployment assistance at (a) present and (b) the same time last year, and the total number of applicants disallowed during the past twelve months for allegedly not seeking work or for other reasons.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Unemployment Assistance: Recipients and Applications Disallowed.
10.
The particulars asked for at (a) and (b) are 24,885 and 27,781, respectively. As regards the latter part of the question statistics of disallowances imposed under the Unemployment Assistance Acts are not readily available and could not be compiled without a considerable expenditure of time and money which it is not proposed to incur.
What I was anxious to know was how many persons were disallowed? That was the whole point, and I am not given that information because I could then disclose how there was an improvement in the position due to people being knocked off. In Africa, they used eat their relatives when they did not want them. Here we just knock them off the register and say the position has improved.