The Workers’ Party have said that the latest Live Register figures released this morning show that we are “back to the bad old days” with the return of unemployment black spots and whole families out of work.

Waterford Workers’ Party councillor Davy Walsh said that the government seems to have given up on dealing with the situation and the disease of inaction which has affected the health service for so long has now spread to almost every major government department.

“We now have 277,200 people officially on the Live Register, just 25,000 short of its all time high water mark of the early 1990s when it passed 300,000.   This month an extra 17,000 people joined the dole queues and we are beginning to see major clusters of unemployment in cities and towns”, said Councillor Walsh.

“The country is in the grip of an economic depression unprecedented in recent times.  The government is so obsessed with cutting spending that it is unable to see beyond cutbacks and crisis management.  At the same time there is a dire need for affordable housing and we need new and modernised schools and hospitals.   It is time to stop looking at the private sector which has walked the country into crisis and go back to state intervention and job creation in the areas such as state construction projects and creation of sustainable jobs based on our own natural resources of people, minerals and food production”, said the Workers’ Party councillor.

Issued 3rd December 2008.