THE clampdown on social welfare fraud is being cited by the Government as the primary reason for the biggest monthly drop in the number of unemployed on the Live Register.
The Live Register at the end of October was 267,586, representing a drop of 11,155 claimants in the month. The unadjusted total has decreased by almost 20,000 over the past two months.
The Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, has said there are probably in the region of 10,000 or more" who could be removed from the Live Register as a result of the Government's new measures to combat welfare fraud.
Welcoming the decrease in claimants for 11 consecutive weeks, Mr De Rossa said yesterday that he was satisfied the ongoing reduction could be attributed to the new and intensified measures introduced to tackle fraud, the job-creation record of 1,000 a week and the new measures introduced to facilitate more unemployed people moving from the dole to work.
The control measures introduced by the Government in recent weeks include an updating of the Department of Social Welfare's records of the addresses of claimants, a series of six-monthly interviews of claimants to review their entitlements and a vigorous approach to the prosecution of employers and claimants found to be engaged in fraud.
The Live Register for October, published by the Central Statistics Office, reported that 11,155 people signed off the dole in October. When seasonally adjusted, the figure represents a fall of 7,600. By the end of the month 267,586 people in the State were registered as unemployed and actively seeking work, adjusted for seasonality to 273,800.
The drop of 7,600 is the largest recorded in a single month by the CSO, which has been monitoring the seasonally adjusted unemployment figure since 1967.
An analysis shows that more people withdrew from the Live Register in the east and in Dublin than in other parts of Ireland.
The Cabinet will be aware that, despite the record drop, there remains a gulf of at least 75,000 between people describing themselves as unemployed in the Labour Force Survey and those receiving unemployment benefits from the State.
Last night the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed welcomed the drop in the Live Register total, saying it appeared that some of the jobs created by the current economic boom were finally filtering down to the unemployed.
However, the Small Firms Association said the Live Register was consistently overestimating the number of genuinely unemployed people and called for it to be scrapped.
Mr Michael McDowell, spokesman for the Progressive Democrats, said the figures highlighted the rampant abuse of the system, since nobody believed 20,000 new jobs had been created in the past eight weeks.
The deputy leader of Fianna Fail, Ms Mary O'Rourke, said there was no room for complacency on unemployment.