More than 18,000 people across Carlow and Kilkenny are on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) or the Enhanced Illness Benefit (EIB).
The numbers getting the PUP locally is now at 13,683 – in Kilkenny it’s up 1,407 on last week while in Carlow it’s only up 36.
4,523 across the two counties are getting the EIB, marking an increase of 516 in KIlkenny and only 24 in Carlow.
It emerged yesterday that less than 30% of Kilkenny’s labour force is on state income supports. But in Carlow over 40% of the workforce is on either the PUP or other social welfare.
CEO of Carlow Chamber, Brian O’Farrell, says more planning needs to be done to make sure everyone gets back to work once the pandemic’s over, telling KCLR News “I think we do need to look at how we’re going to address this because granted the current situation that we’re in and we’re still trying to figure and we don’t have a view yet on how the timeline is going to pan out, we are asking government continuously for more clarity in the measures and that’s one of the things that’s really missing”.
He adds “It is difficult for businesses to manage and project without that proper clarity and we do need a bit more information from the government in that way but that aside we have a strong cohort of businesses in the county, we’re really resilient businesses within the county so we are looking forward to hopefully once the pandemic ends that we can look forward to a better state”.
