The Irish economy has shed over 500 jobs every week for the past 112 weeks, according to the Director of the Small Firms Association, Pat Delaney.
He made his comments after the publication of redundancy figures for the first two months of the year which showed a figure of 4,438 redundancies for January and February. This is 12.9% increase on the same time last year.
1,665 jobs have been lost in the manufacturing sector since January, while the financial services sector shed a further 562 jobs on top of the 4,000 jobs lost in 2003. Distributive trades also made 900 people redundant since the year began.
Delaney says the figures are 'further confirmation that Ireland's business model is now structurally flawed and that employment prospects remain negative'.
'27,702 redundancies were recorded in 2003 and over 11,000 of these were in manufacturing industries. Throughout 2003 the monthly increases in the unemployment rate accelerated and the average number of hours worked declined,' he said.
'If this pattern is allowed to continue then 2004 will be disaster for job retention,' he warned.
