Employment Data
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13
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Rose Conway-Walsh (SF), Mayo

Let us look at the figures. They are not mine, obviously; they those of the CSO, backed up by reports produced by the Northern and Western Regional Assembly, whose work in this regard I acknowledge. It is very important for us to know the picture. On regional unemployment, the CSO states that the State's overall figure for unemployment at the end of quarter 3 of 2025 was 5.3%. The northern and western region, which incorporates the five counties of Connacht, including that in which the Minister of State and I live, as well as Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan, had the highest regional unemployment rate in the country, at 6.1%. This region has been categorised by the EU as a lagging region, well behind Ireland's other two regions, which have a GDP per capita that is almost three times higher. Most worryingly, if we drill down further, just looking at the unemployment rate for the west, which includes our county, Mayo, we see the rate was as high as 6.7%. That is over 25% higher than the figure for the State as a whole.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-13