Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 1380: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of persons in continuous receipt of an unemployment payment for each of the past ten years and the number in continuous receipt of an unemployment payment for each of the last nine years, eight years, seven years, six years, five years, four years, three years, two years and one year. [34002/10]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 1381: To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of persons in receipt of an unemployment payment for at least nine of the past ten years, at least eight of the past ten years, at least seven of the past ten years and so on. [34003/10]

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It is proposed to take Questions Nos. 1380 and 1381 together:

It is not possible to provide statistics on the number of customers who have been in receipt of a jobseeker's payment at different points over a number of years. The system used to make jobseekers payments only records the current claim while previous claims for the same person are archived. A complete claim history for each individual is not readily available and could only be produced by accessing each customer's and former customer's record on the system individually. If there has been a break in claim and the claim was closed, for whatever reason, the system will only record the current claim. An example of such cases would be where a claimant exhausts their Jobseeker's Benefit after 12 months and moves directly to Jobseeker's Allowance.

The following table is based on live claims at 25th September 2010 and only takes the current claim into account.