Employment figures which were published in this morning’s National Household Survey have been described by organisations representing employers and the unemployed as "worrying".
This morning's figures, which estimate unemployment at 4.4 per cent, show the first increase in long-term unemployment since April 1994.
"While long term unemployment is no where near the 10 per cent rate experienced in 1988, this increase is a worrying development," said Eric Conroy, General Secretary of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed(INOU).
"A person's chances of finding work reduce drastically when they become long term unemployed, they are likely to slip into consistent poverty and long term unemployment is a soul destroying experience."
Mr Conroy also said that his organisation was particularly worried that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Industry was cutting back in community employment - the country’s primary labour market programme - at a time when training was urgently required to eradicate long-term unemployment.
"Community Employment is being cut with no new alternative being offered to long-term unemployed people to help them make the way from welfare to work," Mr Conroy added.
"This is a cut which the government made without consulting the social partners and which is in breach of the Programme for Prosperity in Fairness. The INOU is currently campaigning to have these additional cuts in CE reversed immediately."
Unemployment grew most in the Border, West and South East regions, with the Border region suffering a 6 per cent unemployment rate.
The figures also show notable differences between men and women, with males accounting for most of the latest rise. There are an extra 11,100 unemployed males and an extra 3,300 females.
The employers lobby group IBEC said it too was concerned with the figures, white show that over half of the new jobs generated in the past year were in the public sector.
"At a time when the private sector is showing slower job growth, in response to the sharp slowdown in the Irish economy, the public sector has accelerated its recruitment, regardless of the harsh financial realities that many private sector businesses are facing," said Aebhric Mc Gibney, IBEC senior economist.
The slowdown has meant that jobs growth in the private sector has fallen from an annual rate of 4.5 per cent in Q1 2001 to a rate of 1.2 per cent in Q1 2002.
Meanwhile, jobs growth in the public sector (Public Administration and Defence, Education and Health) has accelerated from 5.8 per cent to 6.5 per cent, despite the considerable shortfall in Exchequer revenues that were apparent from the middle of last year.
"The increase in public service numbers, and the long-term pay costs that this will impose, is unsustainable," he said.
"In addition, the increase in numbers has been committed without securing greater efficiencies or productivities from the public sector."
Meanwhile, according to IBEC, the Exchequer surplus of 3.5 per cent GNP in 2000 looks likely to turn into a deficit this year.