Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Every person who is unemployed is someone on the live register and has registered with the Intreo services in my Department. I thank Deputy O'Sullivan for her comments on how much this has improved. What the Deputy is saying is that she would like to see more people being able to avail of the activation services. I do not disagree with that but when we came into office we inherited a situation that people may recall, with an employment rate tipping 15%. It was well over 400,000 and I had a lot of sleepless nights that it would go over 500,000 people because of the mess our friends in Fianna Fáil had left behind. The sheer volume of unemployed people means that the Government decided to give priority to getting those on the live register-----

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