The real rate of unemployment for 1998 is expected to be "5 per cent or even less" of the total workforce, according to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. It also predicts a very significant drop in the Live Register figures for September, which are due for release today. When analysis of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for April 1998 concludes shortly, it is expected to record the lowest rate of unemployment since the survey was introduced in 1988. At that time the LFS unemployment rate was 16.4 per cent. The new figure is expected to show it has fallen by over 65 per cent in the past decade.
The prediction was made by the Department's press officer, Mr Martin Territ, at the publication of the Deloitte & Touche Review of the Community Employment Programme yesterday. The Tanaiste, Minister, Ms Harney, did not attend the press conference but in a statement she described the report as "timely, not only because a great deal of resources are devoted to the programme but because the labour market has changed so dramatically since the scheme's introduction in April 1994".
Mr Territ said the Department very much regretted that the report had first appeared "by way of a leak" in The Irish Times. He said it had been misrepresented in the newspaper. "The report is not about cutting off people who are single parents, people with disabilities, or otherwise," he said.
However, the principal officer of the Department's labour policy unit, Mr Pat Nolan, confirmed that the report recommends reductions of between 15 per cent and 20 per cent - 6,000 to 8,000 - in the numbers on CE schemes. The report confirms that among the groups that will be most affected if the recommendations are adopted are lone parents and people with disabilities. It states that the number of lone parents on CE schemes increased from 4 per cent in 1994 to 22 per cent in 1997.
It recommends that lone parents under 25 should be excluded from CE schemes, and more rigorous medical examinations be applied to people with disabilities. The number of people with disabilities on the schemes increased from 1 per cent to 6 per cent over the same period.
It says the savings, worth up to £58 million, should be diverted to specific job training schemes, even though the numbers of lone parents on these are "minuscule", according to the Department.
The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr Peter Cassells, said yesterday that "Any proposals that withdraw caretakers from schools, or carers from organisations like the Irish Wheelchair Association, would be totally unacceptable to Congress.
"This is a clear example of an individual Government Department failing to approach the problem of meeting crucial social needs on an integrated basis. It is a case of administrators adjusting the system to meet their requirements rather than the needs of the people that are availing of it."
The supervisor of a CE scheme in the Tanaiste's own constituency, said yesterday that local people were "absolutely outraged and fuming at the proposals". Mr Brendan O'Donoghue, who supervises CE schemes at schools in Old Bawn, Killinarden, Brookfield, Springfield and Tallaght community school, said that over the past 12 months, "62 per cent of participants have found fulltime employment and 13 per cent part-time jobs".
Half of the lone parents in the Tallaght schools CE project have found full-time jobs as a result. Mr O'Donoghue felt lone mothers were benefiting more than most groups by using it as a way into the labour market.