This article is from page 2 of the 2011-11-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
THE number of people on the live register in Clare dropped to their lowest levels in two years last month, with the number of people signing on in Clare now below 10,000 for the first time since September of 2009.
Figures released by the Central Statistic Office (CSO) over the weekend confirmed that 9,989 people signed on in Clare in November, almost 800 people less than were on the live register in August of this year.
Clare unemployment activists have moved to pour cold water on the fig- ures, saying that the drop was more to do with an increase in emigration rather than any concrete job creation. Local campaigner and organiser for the Open Fair, Jim Connolly, says that anyone who thinks that there has been a major turnaround in the employment market is living in “cloud cuckoo land”.
“Things are not getting better, not at all, and anyone who thinks that there has been an upturn in employment is living in cloud cuckoo land. Any major fall in the live register is down to emigration, which is a tragic situation,” he said.
“You cannot have development without people and if there aren’t enough people then it makes development more difficult. It is very hard to say what is driving the statistics but what is for sure is that people in Clare are trying very hard at the moment to stave off emigration for as long as possible. People are in a difficult situation but it is not in the nature of people to just sit down and die.”
Jim is one of the organisers behind the Open Fair which took place in Ennis earlier this year. The fair works by offering local producers and entrepreneurs a free chance to show off their product or service and in this way promote new startup businesses.
A second Open Fair has been organised to take place at the West County in Ennis on November 19. All the stands have been booked and the organisers are hopeful for a similar crowd to the debut fair, which generated more than € 7,000 worth of business for those who took part.
Ennis town was one of the areas that showed the greatest drop in the live register figures in recent months, with 5,612 signing on in October of this year, the lowest level since September of 2009 when 5, 576 were signing on.