CHANGES in social welfare regulations could lead to unemployed people losing benefits if they were not considered to be trying hard enough to find work, according to the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU).
The claim was made at a seminar on unemployment in Belfast yesterday. At the same seminar, the chairman of the INOU's Northern Ireland division, Mr Barrie McLatchie, said the Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) in the North represented "the most vicious attack on the unemployed in 17 years of Conservative rule."
Since the JSA was introduced last October this controversial measure has led to a dramatic drop in unemployment rates in Britain and Northern Ireland, but it has also been widely criticised for making unemployed people take up low-paid and poor-quality employment.
The chairman of the INOU, Mr Paul Billings, warned that a similar scheme could be introduced in the Republic if the 1997 Social Welfare Bill was introduced in its present form.
Mr Billings urged the Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa to delete proposals which would allow the Minister to change regulations governing conditions for signing on the Live Register. "Problems may arise because of the inflexibilty of regulations to discriminate between difference cases," Mr Billings said. "What is reasonable employment for one may not be for another, depending on age, gender and physical condition".