Search Results for 'Department of Social Welfare'

Employers who are out of work and who have had to lay off staff, have no recourse to any social welfare benefit and are not included in the Live Register figures, according to Mayo Fine Gael TD John O’Mahony.

Westport is feeling the recession like the rest of Ireland but an article in last Friday's Irish Independent drew “an inaccurately dire picture of Westport's economic status” said Labour's Keith Martin, who is also a member of Westport’s Job Creation Taskforce.

A man who collected over €3,500 of his dead brother’s dole was lucky to avoid jail after the judge commuted sentence to seek a community service report.

A security man who stole goods and diesel worth more than €3,000 from Dawn Dairies and then de-frauded the State of €10,527 worth in social welfare payments has been jailed for 20 months in the Galway District Court.

A man who scammed over €3,500 of his dead brother’s dole nearly three years ago, was sentenced to 22 months in jail at the District Court this week (April 1).

The Department of Agriculture is expected to announce today (Friday) that it is to close its Kilkenny office located at Government Buildings, Hebron Road.

A man with a full-time job and a mortgage who defrauded the State out of €53,720 in disability claims, was given until July 15 to come up with a repayment plan or go to jail for 15 months.

New figures released by the Central Statistics Office this week reveal that unemployment levels continue to rise. There has been a massive 95 per cent increase in the number of people claiming unemployment assistance on the same period last year. Currently, nationally, there are a staggering 388,600 people claiming assistance, up from 188,800 on the corresponding period last year. This means that the unemployment rate has more than doubled from 5.5 per cent this time last year to 11.4 per cent at present.

A Labour party candidate for Castlebar Town Council, has hit out at the Government for what she called a callous attitude towards the old and the young. Bernie Courtney said: “I have met many elderly people who are terrified they will lose their medical card. One couple told me they had received a renewal form from the Department of Social Welfare for their medical card. The form is a gross intrusion into the affairs of elderly people who had found great difficulty in completing the forms. This is no way to treat decent people, the backbone of the country over the years,” said Courtney.

A man given 22 months in jail for defrauding the State out of €3,400 by signing for his dead brother's dole, had his sentence suspended last week (July 21) when he offered restitution and said he wanted to change for his four-year-old daughter.