Vol. 460 No. 5
31 Mr. D. Wallace asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment the ten wards or district electoral divisions with the highest rates of unemployment; and the precise mechanisms that are in place to provide feedback to him on small area changes in unemployment levels. [1586/96]
According to the 1991 Census of Population, which is the source of the most recent official information available at national level, the ten DED/Wards with the highest rates of unemployment were as follows: Arigna, Inishbofin, Mountjoy A, Aran, Priorswood C, North Dock C, John's A, Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart, Caher-murphy, Priorswood B. The actual numbers of people in the labour force in the above wards vary from 11 in Arigna to 1,243 in Priorswood C.
The Central Statistics Office also publishes a monthly area analysis of the number of persons on the live register classified by sex, age group (Under 25 and over 25) and local office of registration. The areas served by such local offices do not correspond to specific geographic boundaries and registrants at a given local office do not necessarily come from a particular region or area which can be precisely delineated. Furthermore, this data only gives numbers of claimants and cannot be used to obtain an unemployment rate for a particular area as there is no available upto-date information on the number of persons in the labour force in equivalent individual areas.
My Department monitors closely both the census information and the numbers of registrants signing at local offices.
FÁS, as part of its planning process for the provision of training for the unemployed and the establishment of targets for the numbers of community employment places in individual regions, pays close attention to local levels of unemployment.
The new local employment service, in the areas where it is operating, is developing mechanisms for feedback on changes in the position of unemployed people who are placed through the LES system.
