The latest CSO figures show that 283,000 people received emergecny welfare in March, with an additional 200,000 already on the register.
Along with those figures, some 25,104 people are currently receiving temporary wage subsidy scheme which means that a total of 515,341 people are now on some sort of income support from the Irish government.
It means that the State’s deficit is now at 2.5 billion euro. The numbers also show that there’s some 17% of the population receiving social welfare payment – a figure that’s even greater than in 2008 when the economic crash occured.
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