Hanafin and INOU disagree on unemployment figures

MINISTER FOR Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin and the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed have disagreed on how high unemployment is likely to get by the end of the year.

While the organisation's co-ordinator, John Stewart, yesterday predicted unemployment would reach 7.1 per cent - "if not higher" - by the end of the year, Ms Hanafin said "nobody seems to be indicating a figure of 7.1 per cent by the end of the year". The Minister said she did not expect it to climb much higher than the current 6.2 per cent. The two were speaking separately to journalists at the publication of a new INOU handbook for the unemployed, Working For Work.

The booklet sets out information on welfare rights, unemployment payments, community employment schemes and other training opportunities. Ms Hanafin acknowledged that Department of Finance projections earlier in the year - that unemployment would be at 170,000 this month - were wrong by a figure of almost 80,000, with the number now standing at 247,000. However, she believed numbers would be down next month, as people returning to education should take some people off the live register.

"I am very conscious now that the latest figures show there are 247,384 people unemployed.

"That number four at the end is just as important as the 247,000 at the beginning, because they are four individuals with their lives, careers, dreams and families," she added. "Each one of those needs support."

The Minister also described recent comments by the Fine Gael spokesman on enterprise and employment, Leo Varadkar, as "racist". Mr Varadkar last week proposed that unemployed non-nationals should be offered welfare payments to go home.

She said his comments could not apply to EU nationals. "So he can only mean Africans, and so the comments were racist."