Ireland sees joblessness hit 18-year high in June

Published on 05/07/2012 00:00

UNEMPLOYMENT in austerity-stricken Ireland has hit 14.9 per cent, the highest rate in 18-years, official figures for June have revealed.

And the rate could have been worse if it had not been for mass emigration.

Ireland’s Central Statistics Office said about 76,000 people last year left Ireland – which has a population of 4.5 million – seeking work in other English-speaking countries, chiefly Britain, Australia and Canada. The trend continued this year

Unemployment rose from 14.7 per cent in May. It last reached 15 per cent in March 1994, the year that Ireland began its first extended economic boom, becoming known as the Celtic Tiger.

That stellar economic expansion slashed unemployment and spurred Ireland’s first-ever wave of immigration, but much of the growth proved to be fuelled by cheap eurozone credit and property speculation.

Boom turned to bust in 2008 when the credit crunch exposed reckless lending at Irish banks, forcing the government to nationalise five of them at a crippling cost. Ireland’s European Union-International Monetary Fund bail-out followed in 2010.

While Ireland’s economy has eked out tepid growth thanks to export strength by Irish-based multinationals, economists say those headline GDP figures mask unrelenting recession in the real domestic economy.

Merrion Stockbrokers in Dublin yesterday predicted a further 1.5 per cent fall this year in consumer spending, the fifth straight year of contraction, with house prices due to fall another 13.5 per cent.

But after four years of emergency austerity budgets Ireland should be able to post a 2012 deficit of 8.0 per cent of GDP due to higher-than-expected tax revenues.